Mom.

Well, this was unexpected. I guess that is how life goes though, right?

When Dean and I started talking about this crazy idea of going on this trip and sharing our experiences, this wasn’t part of the story.

My mom wasn’t sick. But then she was, and now she’s gone.

We planned to start telling our story from the beginning. In the order of when all the craziness started, but life loves to throw us curve balls. We sure have had our fair share. I felt I needed to tell this part now. The wounds still aren’t even remotely healed yet, but I am slowly trying to crawl out of the hole. Writing this I hope in some way will help, maybe it won’t.

We had decided to share our story as we start this big trip and well, I guess this is a perfect example as to why we and everyone should live life to the fullest and love hard because things change so fast. Often times so fast that you lose the opportunity to say a millions things you wished you said and a million other questions you wish you asked. That certainly holds true for me now.

My mom passed away a little over a month ago now, February 2, 2022. I planned a “Celebration of Life” Party for her over this past weekend. Mom didn’t want a traditional funeral. In part, I am sure from the trauma of dealing with my sister, (her daughters), funeral when I was just 3. My sister passed away from leukemia at the age of 5 after being sick for a good amount of those years.

My mom hadn’t been feeling great for over a year. She was having stomach issues that continued to be brushed off. Throat issues that was diagnosed as GERD, then she started having a persistent cough and fatigue that was finally diagnosed as pneumonia. She had “pneumonia” for about three months and was not getting better. Doctors kept just giving her more medications and said that it could take time.

I told my mom I think she needs to go to another doctor. and that it wasn’t normal she was still this sick. Finally she did, and the dr ordered a chest CT.

On December 28, 2022 she was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. CT showed a tumor in her right bronchi. We didn’t know the staging at the time, but based on her symptoms and scan results I feared the worse. I had just dealt with the passed year and a half of Dean’s cancer and treatments so slight PTSD was real.

Next steps were PET scans and Pulmonary Specialists but before we were able to get too far into those tests my mom was hospitalized. They found fluid in her lungs and around her heart and had to perform a pericardiocentesis ( basically a needle in your chest wall to the sac around heart to drain fluid) and also a thoracentesis ( same concept but in your lung) but they kept the drain tubes there to continue to drain fluid as they expected the fluid to continue building up. It was frustrating that due to covid restrictions we were not able to be at the hospital with her at all ( that's a whole other rant I will save for another time). She stayed in the hospital for another week with some complications and we did get confirmation that the cancer was stage 4 due to the fact that the fluid around her heart tested positive for cancer cells. We were still waiting to get her PET scan to get more specific details to know treatment options.

She was finally able to go home, but had to remain on oxygen, needed a walker, still had the lung drain, and wasn’t able to eat or breath well.

We still remained hopeful that we would get treatment options to get her feeling better, but a week later she got worse and was hospitalized again.

She was in a lot of pain, fluid was building up again around the heart and because of how aggressive the cancer was the options for treatment ran out.

PET scan confirmed that the cancer had spread to her bones, spine and the fluid around her heart.

As a family we decided to get her moved to hospice inpatient on the Sunday that the Chiefs lost the AFC Championship game to the Bengals. Mom loved football and loved her Chiefs. That evening mom was awake and texting for the first time in a week and texting about the Chiefs game. She was NOT happy they lost..lol. Once mom was being moved into hospice we were able to be at hospital with her. That night was the last time my mom was able to talk to us.

She was in hospice for 3 days and her body couldn’t fight anymore and she passed away just after 10pm on Wednesday, February 2, 2022.

We spent those last few days by her side in hospice.

She is finally out of pain, at peace and reunited with my sister, Kristyna.

The celebration was difficult but it was so nice to have our amazing friends and family that joined us. We had lots of food which included some of my moms favorites, such as Publix chicken tenders and Baskin Robbins ice cream cake.

We ended the night with sending sky lanterns up with messages to mom.

It’s still surreal that she is gone, it hurts a lot and it happened SO darn fast.

She knew all about our trip as we had filled her in on our crazy plan and showed her our route and everywhere we planned to go. She was excited for us. I know that she will be looking down and watching us as we start our big trip and with us the entire way.

Love you mom.