Blessings Abound!

Wow. Just wow. It is very rare to have a weekend like the one I have just had. Rare and amazing and beautiful and life-affirming. I'm putting this weekend in my mental bank and I am referring back to it every time I have a down moment. I have no doubt that the memories of it will lift me up when I am feeling sad or negative.

This weekend started Friday morning with a visit to my mother's oncologist. Hard to imagine that a terrific weekend would start with a visit to a cancer doctor, huh? I'll give you a little bit of background. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of August 2013. I have never been more in shock in my life. She had a completely normal mammogram in January 2013, and she found this lump herself mid-August. In those seven months, she had grown a tumor the size of a golf ball. Needless to say, this cancer was classified as aggressive and fast-growing. Although our family has a history of just about every kind of cancer you can think of, we have absolutely NO family history of breast cancer. It is nothing short of a miracle that this tumor was in a location easily found by my mom, and that she did not put off having it biopsied. She began aggressive chemotherapy treatment on October 1, 2013, and it was not lost on me that this was the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. She lost her hair. She suffered through horrible mouth sores that made swallowing nearly impossible. She was hospitalized for a fever that, thankfully, was not indicative of infection but easily could have been. She completely lost her appetite, yet she gained weight because of the steroids she was on. She also smiled through the whole ordeal and never had any doubt whatsoever that she was going to come out the other side of this thing, happy and healthy. She was blessed with angels on Earth at the hospital, beautiful and compassionate nurses and doctors who knew she would be okay. She underwent a lumpectomy on February 27, 2014. And Friday morning, her oncologist declared her in complete remission. No sign of the tumor, no cancerous cells in the surrounding tissue, no cancer in the lymph nodes. My mother, father, brother, aunt, sister-in-law and nephew were all there to hear this amazing and fabulous news. According to my mother's doctor, she is in a very low-risk category for this cancer to recur. Although he says you can never call a breast cancer patient "cured," he wants her to believe in her heart that she IS cured. So that is what we are all going to do. I've never felt so much like celebrating in my life. My mom and I are nothing alike. We have wildly different styles, ideas and passions. But she is my everything, and I am not sure I realized that before we went through this experience together. The idea of losing her stopped me in my tracks. I am almost forty years old, but in regards to my mom, I am still a child and cannot imagine a world without her. Hopefully it will be a long while before I will have to. I love you, Mom. I am so proud of you and your fight and your courage. I am so grateful that you are going to be okay.

Long post, and this is just regarding Friday morning!!! The weekend continued in epic fashion! More to come later...thanks for hanging in there with me. :)