I am not sure how many people have travelled across the prairies but it is an experience you will never forget. When my husband and I moved to Saskatchewan in 2015 from the Okanagan, I learned that the drive across the prairies is constant almost boring and gives you a lot of time to think. Its not like I am stranger to the prairies, I spent my first thirty years of my life in Calgary but here in Saskatchewan its different, no mountains, no chinooks, no curves–just constant flatness—and time lots of time to think.
The thoughts swirled in my mind on this trip but my “to do list” brain kicked into high gear. First of all I left without being able to reach my Mom or my son. When I finally reached my Mom, she was midly annoyed I was coming because she thought I was overreacting, but I heard something else in her voice — relief, gratefulness, peace, fear. When I finally got my son on the phone, not a text, which was a hard task with a twenty year old whois constantly on his phone and texting every minute of his life, I could tell something was off. It wasn’t just typical indifference of that age group, my mom intution told me it was something deeper.
Families are complicated and mine are no exception to the rule and I had the joy of three families with opinions, thoughts, feelings, pasts, and ruputured relationships. As I drove down that prairie highway with several thoughts and fears in my mind, I felt I was driving into a land mine. As I made the trip to Calgary where I would be spending the night before heading to Kelowna the next morning, information from my Mom about the true state of her medical condition began to come in.
When my Mom had her colonscopy, the doctor was only able to do half of the scope and the plan was to schedule a CT scan later on as an outpatient, however she became very sick. My mom was also an insulin dependent diabetic and the sicker she got after her colonscopy the more side effects she had from her diabetes. This is one of the reasons I pushed her so hard to go to the hospital. I can count on my hands the number of times my Mom has been sick in my life and this whole situation scared me. I knew a storm was coming.
As I entered Alberta, my Mom texted me and let me know that her CT scan was happening right away and she would have more information for me after the scan. Due to the overwhelmed healthcare system in BC as in everywhere else in Canada, my Mom’s first 24 hours were spent basically in make shift room/cubicle in a hallway so I was recieving information by texts when I would stop. The next thing I heard was two doctors brought my Mom into a private room to talk about her CT scan. I wouldn’t know anything until I arrived at my hotel a hour away because my Mom was concerned about my safety while driving. The next hour felt like the longest hour of my life, although I would learn that it would only be the beginning of many periods of waiting for news and then wishing I could turn back the page and not know what I had just learned.
I settled into my hotel room, ordered food, got comfy, and as I look back on it now I realize I will never forget that hotel. Not because it was a special hotel but because of what I learned in that room. Then my phone dinged….My mom was a private person and so this whole conversation was over text because she was still in a public area. My mom had been notified by the two doctors that the scan had shown cancerous tumors on her ovaries, pancreras, liver, and stomach lining. How could this be? My mom hadn’t had any signs of being sick and now she had cancer? The tumor on her ovaries was four times the size of her actually size of her ovary and her pancreras tumor was growing as well. They told her if you get cancer, this is not the type of cancer you want to get. They also wanted to wait until I got there the next morning to go over everything but my mom and I knew what they were saying it was cancer….terminal cancer….my life with my mom was coming to end and her journey home was about to begin.
A Legacy of Love 