its breast cancer

January 18, 2001.

The phone rings.  Its you calling me from the hospital in Sioux Falls.  Mom was admitted to the hospital last night.  Before you had the chance to say anything more, I said to you, "She has breast cancer, doesn't she?".  Yes, you say, with clear emotion.

While sitting at dinner the night before, Mom had suddenly requested that you take her to the hospital, not the local hospital, but the tertiary care center 90 miles away.  You could barely understand her speech.  Something was wrong with it.  She couldn't get the words our right.  En route, she confessed she had a "lump" in her breast.  She had also experienced an episode of loss of speech 6 months earlier and earlier the same day.


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it was a lot more than just breast cancer. 

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I arrive after an emergency flight to Sioux Falls.  She is lying in the bed, small, not speaking.

What is that smell?
The doctor comes in to look at the biopsy site - we meet for the first time.  He lifts the gown and I can't believe what I see:

 It was a neglected breast cancer that had eaten the breast off the surface of the chest, leaving stinky poopy smelling hole.

It had already spread to the bone.

The illness had caused such a profound anemia that she had a stroke, losing speech and the use of the right side of the body.
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you start to speak of fighting the cancer and of hope which seems totally out of place to me based on what I see.
It will be a miracle if she lives 3 months.  We need to help her move on with reality now, not try to hold her back.

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how many years did it take for this thing to develop like this?
Why has this been hidden?
Why didn't you notice it?
Why didn't you tell me?

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The doctor expresses his sympathy to me, doctor to doctor.
He knows what I know, and how this would make me feel.

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I internally recall that I always somehow intuitively knew it would come to this for her.  The first time I ever saw such a site during my medical training, I thought to myself, "that is something my own mother would let happen" .