On January 7th, it will be fifty years since my mother left this Earth. I was twelve when she died of lung cancer. The irony, she had never smoked.
My mother didn’t have surgery because back then it was thought cancer ‘grew’ once it was exposed to air. This was the hypothesis on why surgery often failed to completely remove the primary tumors. Now we know about margins and microscopic seedings of tumors. But not back then.
My mother underwent chemotherapy — I remember the name of the treatment — she was given mustard gas. She was also simultaneously radiated. When she was buried, we had a helluva time finding a dress to cover the radiation burns which extended from her chest up to her chin. She weighed roughly one-half her usual body weight by the time all was said and done, a mere eighty pounds.
It was less than four months from diagnosis to grave.
To say my mother’s death was the defining moment of My Life would be a severe understatement. Every decision I made from that point on was colored by trauma and grief over her loss.
It is said caregivers are made. One of the first nurse managers who interviewed me at the beginning of my career asked, “What was it for you?” Then he explained he had grown up with alcoholic parents. And I knew exactly…
