Holding onto HOPE!

Denial is not a river in Egypt: it's a tricky little thing, that gives you false hope. Denial is the mirage in the desert of life, when you are searching for good news.

 Last night my mom called me at about 10:30 PM and asked if I wanted to come over and spend the night.  We hadn't had a chance to catch up on her trip details. and this morning she had her MRI with contrast of the brain.  I told her, I would stay overnight with her and got my pajamas together and drove over there, when I arrived, she was very tried but wanted to visit with me.

So we sat up, until after three in the morning, talking and laughing about stupid things.  At one point in our conversation she says, "You know, I just think they are going to tell me that its all been a mix up- you know how they switch medical records by accident."   

I was silent for moment.  She just needed to say those words out-loud and listen to them as they left her mouth.

I asked her, if she thought she might be tripping down denial?   She said, "Yeah maybe a little."   I told her, "Well Mom let's just sit in denial for another week-" she is going to see her oncologist on March 6th and he is going to give her the news.  We are hoping that this isn't in her brain, but I am afraid the PET scan, is going to tell us something that has already spread to her brain.

She has only been sad less then a handful of times and I think that after we leave the land of denial, we might just land right in the middle of sadness.  So for today, right now, we are living in denial.  It is blissful, but we are also haunted with the ever looming presence of her deteriorating health.  She has been complaining for a while about headaches that bother her everyday.  (This is not a good sign.)  Her balance is off,  she almost fell on me twice while I was there.  She cannot walk the length of JC Penny's without stopping to rest.  Her wheeze is much more noticeable then before she left on her trip to Palm Desert.

As Margaret Weiss once said, " Hope is the denial of reality" So for today, right now, we hold on to hope!