Author: Nadene

First of all, I know it has been a couple weeks since I have written that was due to some technical and computer issues as well as believe it or not a blizzard in April — the life of spring in Saskatchewan but I am back to continue with my story.

Sleep evaded me that night in the hotel in Calgary, I had so many thoughts racing in my head I just couldn’t believe that this was happening to my Mom — she was the one that was so health conscious and on top of everything and in control of everything. She had so much more to do, so much more to give to this world, we had more of a life to live together this couldn’t be the end—could it??

I got up early the next morning and started my trip “home” to Kelowna, it used to be home but now it felt foreign heading back but I also felt that my car couldn’t get there fast enough. Not only was my Mom in the hospital with this terrible news hanging over her head and alone. My son had been alone overnight with our two dogs and he doesn’t do too well alone being responsible for other beings. I wanted to go to the house to check on everything but my heart could not get to the hospital fast enough. I arrived at the Kelowna General Hospital around noon three days before my birthday in September 2019, it was a typical sunny fall Okanagan day but as I walked into the hospital I felt like Eeyore with a storm cloud following me the whole way to my mom’s hospital room.

When I got to her room and saw her, I was happy…happy to see her I had been back to BC in over a year but I was scared…not many things can stop my Mom to the point that she is hospitalized and that by itself scared me. We visited for a few minutes and then the doctor came in and my life was going to change forever…all my fears were going to become a reality. The doctor told us that the further investigation the hospital had done determined that my mom had terminal cancer…she had a mass on her ovaries triple the normal size of the ovaries. There were also masses in her pancreas, liver, and her peritoneum. For those who don’t know the peritoneum is the thin layer of epithelial cells that line the inside wall of the abdomen. This was not good news and as quick as you could snap your fingers my world was shattered, I went completely white I didn’t know where to go from here, but the incredible thing is my mom did. She was calm and business like and her concern was me as it has always been. I realized I had to be strong for her and that meant no crying, because to her it was a sign of weakness and I could not appear to be weak not when she was had such a great attitude, was so strong, and was cracking jokes. This was my time to be strong for her.

The doctor said they would be doing a biopsy and that chemotherapy was an option, this would not save her life but it might slow down the cancer and give us more time, so now all we could do was wait…The hope was my Mom could do her treatments on an outpatient basis so after the biopsy in a couple days the doctors were going to release her to await chemotherapy. Our plan was for me to go to the house and assess the damage of one night of my son by himself and then come back later as my Mom wanted to go over her action plan, one thing I was sure of was if this cancer thought it was going to control my Mom, it picked the wrong person….

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.

This is my story…this is her story…in a way it’s everyone’s story. It’s a story of enduring love, a story of loss, pain, grief, and ultimately hope. I am only going to talk about a small chunk of time in each post as there is so much to process and I want to give you a full picture of what I experienced good and bad. I will try and do a post every week and as this is my first blog and a very personal story please be gentle. A funny side note, my Mom always said she should write a book about her life so I guess in a way I am fulfilling that wish for her.

I think the best place to start is tell you a little bit about me and my mom. My mom was a strong, independent, socially conscious woman and not afraid to speak her mind, however she also cared deeply about those around her. With that brief description in mind, I am sure it will come as no surprise that I was raised to be the same. My mom has always been a helper and saver which made sense given her career as a Child Protection Social Worker for over 40 years. In fact she was still employed at the time of her passing, she was scheduled to retire on the Monday and passed on the Sunday morning. My mom was a strong Christian and had a strong faith in Christ so if reference to that bothers you best to stop reading. Even though we had our difficult times during my childhood and adulthood my mom and I were very close and have many of the same traits. The reason for this is my mom was a single parent most of her life and even when my stepfather came on scene it was still her and I against the world, but my world was about to change…a storm was coming.

In 2004, after my first marriage blow up for the final time I relocated to Kelowna and my mom and I decided to live together and co-parent my son who was diagnosed with Asperger’s a few years later. I worked part time and worked on my university degree and my mom worked and took on the main parenting role. This arrangment went on smoothly until after my divorce was finalized in 2014 and I decided to start dating and met my current husband. There were many arguments as she disagreed with this and a period of estrangment between my Mom and myself and a very hard relationship between my son and I. After our marriage my husband and relocated to Saskatchewan where we have lived for the past 8 years and my Mom and I slowly worked on our issues and videochatted daily and had virtual coffee every morning. It was in one of these chats that she told me that her doctor was sending her for a colonoscopy.

In my mom’s yard in the Okanagan, there are beautiful plum trees…3 of them, and my Mom being the generous soul that she was shared. Two of my close friends went a couple days after my mom’s colonscopy to get plums from her yard. These girls have known my mom for 10 plus years and when they saw her they called me. What they didn’t know was I had talked to my mom and she hadn’t been able to eat, she was pain and my son wasn’t around to help her. He was 19 now and driving, I thought he was just being insensitive but I would learn later there was alot more to this story. It took a few hours and very sharp tongued conversations but I finally convinced her to go to the emergency room. At that moment something changed in me, I had a feeling…a gut feeling

At that moment, I got scared and thoughts started racing in my head…my gut told me something was horribly wrong and I thought of all the moments my mom and I have had together all the smiles, happy times, all the fights, tears, and power struggles…this couldn’t be the end could it? Something told me this was my time to be strong for her that the circle of life was moving and things were about to change. So I packed a bag got into my car and headed to Kelowna for a journey that would rock me to the core.