6.30.11

AYNSLEY:
I send off June with anxiety and helplessness. Mom just came out of a successful surgery to remover her OMaya Reservoir. The neurosurgeon said everything went well and that though Mom has a minor infection, she wouldn't have been able to fight it off with a foreign body implanted in her brain. Now that it's out, the infection should clear up easily with the course of antibiotics that has already begun.

Six more weeks of antibiotics. This means that chemo can't resume for another six weeks. So Mom is going essentially cancer-treatment free for the next month and a half. It can't be helped, though it makes me even angrier that Dr. C. didn't coordinate better in the first place with the radiation oncology team.

That's part of the helplessness-nothing I feel or do today can change any past events. Nothing I think or say has any bearing on the outcome of Mom's disease. I can scream at the doctors (which I don't), I can throw tantrums in my apartment 3,000 miles away (maybe this happens from time to time), I can take a page out of Mom's book and accept each day and try to make it the best it can be (which I struggle so hard with, I am trying to live up to this set president and falling so pathetically short)...but most often I just do nothing and either listen on the phone or listen in person and wonder how much more she can take. I just get so sad that she's had to take so much already and knowing that there's surely more in store.

My parents will likely be staying at Overlake for another two days. Mom wasn't able to eat anything today due to the surgery this evening, (though she was able to negotiate one ice cube at some point this afternoon, which she savored, and if that doesn't break your heart, man...) but all day tomorrow and maybe Saturday she'll be able to enjoy the awesome Overlake menu. She and my dad also have the perks of the amazing Overlake staff, who we all adore and who are all exceptional.