Tag: brain cancer

Posted in 2024, family, life, Memories

Heading Towards the Unexpected

Posted on by nancyb422

What were your parents doing at your age?

I’m turning 64 this year. My parents are 2 years apart, so we’ll just use the same age range.

My mother was working for a nice local construction company where she had worked for many years. They were good to her. She got the job because she was good at what she did and they were our neighbors so they knew they could trust her. Outside of work, she spent a lot of time reading and she enjoyed going to tag sales on Saturdays with her sister in law Edna.

My dad was working for a local rehabilitation hospital in their Facilities Department as their painter/wall paperer which was his profession since he got out of the army in 1946. He really enjoyed working there because of all the people he got to see and my sister worked in the Occupational Therapy Department. He started golfing again when my sisters and I were in high school so he probably golfed sometime during the week and maybe weekends – I don’t really recall!

This was also the time that my mother had a ticking time bomb in her brain called a Glioblastoma Multiform weaving its way through the areas of her brain. Little did they know how different life would be towards the end of that 64th year.

Posted in 2023, family, Memories

Painful Memories

Posted on by nancyb422

Something that happened to my niece recently who lives two time zones away, brought up some emotions in me that have been long buried.

I moved from Connecticut to California in 1987 when I was 27 and five months after my mother died from brain cancer.

In November of 1989, on a Saturday afternoon, I had intense pain in my side and my husband rushed me to the local hospital. It was discovered I was pregnant but bleeding internally somewhere. After an inconclusive ultrasound, I had exploratory surgery and they found it was a ruptured cyst. They stopped the bleeding, said hello to my little fetus, and closed me back up.

All of this was long before the days of cell phones, zoom, FaceTime, social media. And three hours time difference from my family.

I remember my husband calling my father to tell him. I remember asking him to call my boss to tell her I wouldn’t be at work on Monday. I remember talking to my sisters from the hospital.

I don’t know if I wished for my mother at the time but resurrecting these memories, I wish I had her then, even from a distance like my niece has my sister now.

Posted in family

What We Keep

Posted on by nancyb422

I found this somewhere sometime in late 1986 or early 1987. I was in my “calligraphy phase” and I spent hours writing out poems and my name.

The day my mother died in early April of 1987 it rained and poured and the wind howled and all I could thing was “how appropriate”. She so young, her daughters so young.

I pictured her setting the wind and rain in motion to tell us how sorry she was to leave.

I had my cousin Ann read this during the funeral mass. I’m sure no one else felt the significance except me but I felt like I was telling her that I understood.

Posted in life

Getting Older

Posted on by nancyb422

As I edge towards my 60th birthday, I can’t help but to start thinking about my mortality. In my 20s, 30s and even 40s, I think I felt so invincible. Aside from the achy right hip, even now I work out every morning to Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30 or 30 day Shred or a Firm workout but I still can’t help but think what’s in store for me in the coming years.

My mother died the day before her 65 birthday from brain cancer. Not a cancer that she lived with that traveled to her brain but out and out Brain Cancer. Glio-blastoma Multiforme. The most aggressive cancer that begins within the brain. Nightmare. Diagnosed January 31, 1987 and died April 4, 1987.

So I can’t help but think.