My Mother, My Best Friend

My mother was always my best friend. She was always there for me, and I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing person to raise me. And while I know the bond between a mother and a son is a special one to begin with, ours reached a completely new level I will cherish forever.

When I was just 5 years old, my mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer which sadly seemed familiar to my family as just years before I was born, my grandmother had Breast Cancer and gone through a mastectomy and chemo journey of her own. But having been born now, just five years later, I was front and center for the impact it had not only on my mom, but our entire family. Though my mother hid the pain she had from us behind smiles and funny wigs and hats, we could all see what she was going through, especially me. My mom was my best friend and years later our connection grew stronger as I had to battle my own war by her side.

Before my mother became sick, she would come to read to my sister and I’s classrooms and the kids knew her well for that. While my mom would come read to the kids, she did so in plain clothes. But when she became sick, things started to change. My mother tried to hide the side effects of chemo, but soon dropped the facade she was hiding behind when she became noticeably weaker. I still remember the night she asked my aunt to shave her head completely. After losing most of her hair in clumps days earlier thanks to the chemo, she committed to the idea that it was finally okay to lose it all. In my aunt’s garage, my sister and I held our mothers’ hands while my aunt buzzed off my mom’s remaining locks. It’s an image I will never forget! But as much as she hurt and struggled with the exhaustion of treatment, she longed to return reading to our classrooms. Though as a way of shielding the kids from the physical changes she had gone through from chemo and cancer itself as to not scare the kids, she did so now in fun costumes and wigs. Every week, it was a new exciting challenge trying to come up with new handmade costumes themed to the books she read each Friday. My entire family took part in every crazy costume she wore each week. Some of her most memorable costumes that stick out to me are a giant cob of corn made of yellow sponges she wore to read books about Thanksgiving, as well as hilarious bag of Easter jelly beans made possible with a clear trash bag and air filled mini water balloons made to look like the very candy she was. It was incredible, and she continued to read to the kids years after she recovered from cancer, but she still continued to hide what she had really been struggling with. Due to the cancer and its treatment, she lost both her breasts to a double mastectomy and had her lungs completely scarred from the radiation targeted directly at her chest affecting her breathing longterm in the process. My mother hid so much pain from us, but the medical world of hospital trips and long stays in the oncology department was very open to us kids, my sister and I. Though sadly the medical experience and knowledge we gained came in handy to us all years later when tragedy struck our family again almost half a decade later.

Well, just a handful of years later I started to experience what can only be described as never being able to properly empty my bladder, and never being able to drink enough liquid to satisfy my thirst. While I can’t recall when I first started going through these odd feelings, I do know they began after my family and I bought our very first filtered water/ice dispensing refrigerator, which seemed a little too coincidental, at least to my parents discretion. The ability to drink fresh water and grind your own crushed ice, amazing right? It was great! But the problem at hand: unkempt thirst and the inescapable need to constantly use the bathroom started to grow quickly and out of control as I constantly chugged cup after cup from of the cold water our new refrigerator now dispensed. After numerous doctor visits and normal test results, I was handed off to an endocrinologist, who instantly gave me the creeps, but after returning from a nightmarish road trip to my cousin’s wedding in Monterey, California and having to constantly make stops along the way to use the bathroom even though I was on a strict minimal liquid diet, I was still determined to figure out the root of this evil brewing inside me. So when I returned from the treacherous roadtrip, I was put under a “Water Deprivation Test’” where I was forced to stay in the hospital for a day and not be allowed to drink water for hours so they could measure my urine output and its water level concentration every time I used the bathroom. And let me tell you, with the symptoms I was experiencing and not being allowed to drink water the entire day, it was a personal hell to me. Multiple times I remember asking the nurses to go to the bathroom and trying to sneak water every time I washed my hands, but because of that, I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom with the door closed and had to be under constant supervision as to no ruin the results of the test prematurely. Looking back at this experience, I feel bad for my mom and my aunt who were there to support me as I constantly begged them for water knowing very well they couldn’t give it to me. But soon enough after enough tests had been done, I was given a pill, to which I grabbed with glee knowing I’d finally get water to swallow it down. Never having taken pills before as a child of 9 years old, I chugged the Dixie cup of water and took the pill with it. Hours later, I still continued to have my urine output tested, but my thirst for liquid quickly diminished. The doctor I’d been going to see for months emerged with my diagnosis, “He has Diabetes Insipidus, a rare type of diabetes which runs on sodium and controls the liquid balance in the body instead of sugar.” Finally, after months of hell trying to figure what was really wrong with me, I had an answer. But sadly, the calm didn’t last for long.

Almost a year later, the day after I turned 10, I knew something was wrong. Months prior, I struggled to get my rare case of Diabtetes Insipidus diagnosed through hospital visits and what seemed like a million tests, but this was different. I woke up and got ready for school, but something was different that morning. I was not feeling sick, nor ill, but my voice had dropped a multitude of octaves. What just was hours after spending the night out before with family at the county fair riding rides and playing carnival games, I awoke to a voice that sounded like a high-schooler. My family noticed as well as my classmates and it was obvious something was really wrong. Months later I began to have major headaches and started losing my vision. While the visits to the ER and its CT scan results proved there was nothing wrong, the fateful night I went home with mere Vicodin to sooth the pain and passed out in the bathroom while getting ready for bed, proved to us that this pain was so much more than just a simple slew of migraines and headaches. So we rushed back to the ER in search of more answers than they had given us hours before. It was time to find out what was truly going on inside this weird little 10 year old’s head! After deciding that all the CT scan results were inconclusive, they admitted me to the hospital. For almost a full month I sat in a bed waiting to find out my fate, only thinking of the worst. I remember being teased daily by a neurosurgeon who constantly claimed, “You don’t need brain surgery today, but we’ll see tomorrow,” as if it were a hilarious joke to play with a kid’s mental and emotional state.

Finally, they made the call to perform an MRI and put me under general anesthesia to keep me from moving around for the lengthy process and found what we had all been dreading for a long time, a massive particle brain tumor lumped together clinging to my pea-sized pituitary gland smack dab in the middle of my cranium. Doctors wanted to perform brain surgery on me right away even after I was teased that I didn’t need it for the entire month prior, but continued with more tests and found an additional white mass blip in one of my testicles as well. While most of this seemed like a blur of days or hours all combined in one to me, what I do recall is slowly waking up in my hospital bed after a lengthy anesthesia filled nap with my head bandaged up and my family gathered around me. I could hear the voices of my aunt and mother talking to a doctor outside. As they both walked in together, my mother sobbed, “I can’t do it. I can’t tell him.” 

My aunt without hesitation held my mom close then walked over to me sitting on my bedside, “Code, you have cancer.” There it was in plain site, the cause of my headaches and the loss my vision. Finally, the answer to the riddle I’d been trying to solve for months had been solved!

Shortly after my diagnosis, I had learned the truth that while I was asleep before, that brain surgeons attempted to get a biopsy of my tumor and ended up pulling out nothing but fat protein..or at least we hope it was. Not only that, they were going to attempt to remove my blipped testicle without dismay until my mom begged them not to. As it turns out I really did have brain cancer, but without the proof of what type of tumor it was, my doctors made an educated guess that it was something called a Germ Cell Tumor. Plus, because of where it was on my pituitary (the “Master Gland,” as it’s known because it controls the entirety of the body’s hormone output) my body was being thrown into premature puberty thanks to a mega dose of released testosterone which was ultimately the cause of my untimely voice change. Oh and did I mention, where my tumor was…Diabetes Insipidus was a common symptom? So not only did I have to undergo the horrible tests to figure out what “illness” I had years prior, my creep of an endocrinologist failed to mention that cancer may have been the underlying cause of it all? If I really had the start of a brain tumor growing in my brain way back when I was being tested for Diabetes Insipidus, we’ll never know. Gee, thanks Doc! 

So, now that we knew the root of all my problems, it was time for treatment. As a method of ridding the tumor out of my head, I was prescribed 6 rounds of chemo as well as 6 months of radiation directly after that was done. Chemo sucked…a WHOLE lot. I had horrible stomach problems (and still do to this day) and almost always threw up after every meal I had. I can still remember the horrible day I went to take a shower and screamed at the clumps of hair falling from my head. My mother ran upstairs to see what the commotion was about, only to see me in the midst of a panic attack. She knew just what to do and turned my shower into a bath. She sat me down to rinse the hair off my head, just like my aunt had done to help her 5 unfortunate years before and we both cried together through it all. My mom was my best friend. Every hospital stay I was admitted to, she was there. Only leaving to use the bathroom or go home to take a shower and then return hours later, she was always there. While my aunt and sister stayed multiple times to keep her and I company, she was my constant companion through my entire batch of treatments. She was there to battle arrogant nurses who thought they knew everything, fighting doctors who proclaimed they knew just what to do and practically saving my life one night when my medications went haywire as I ended up in the ICU. She never left my side. The bond between my mother and I grew very close and lasted for years after that. I can never thank her enough for how much she was always there for me, even helping me attend 100’s of follow-up doctor appointments, radiation treatments and testosterone shots along the way. Not to mention the times I fought her while she did my supplemental growth hormone shots I needed every night for years after my treatment. No matter what I had to do, she was always there for me. But years later, tables were turned and I was the one to sit by her side instead.

Around the mid 2010’s the damage the radiation had caused my mom’s lungs became more apparent and continued to worsen. When out and about with my family, we constantly had to take breaks in between short walks for her to catch her breath. For months she battled weight loss, then weight gain due to the increased dose of steroids, then major weight loss once again. Until late 2017 when her lungs began to take their toll. After many trips to the hospital, we discovered that her lungs were failing and on top of that, she had hypertension. After all that she had been through, my mom’s lungs were filled with major scar tissue which looked like cobwebs on each test they performed. My mom’s lungs were failing, and her heart was working too hard to pump the blood she needed to survive. It was horrible to watch my hero who had always been there for me, fall apart. Every hospital visit, I was right there never leaving her side. While I loved her and would do anything for her regardless, it was also my time to return the favor and be there for her through it all. While all this was going on, my father still had to work full time to continue supporting our family so most nights at home, it was just my mother and I. While her and I had been close thanks to the years we spent together through my treatment, we had never been closer than we were then. Each night, I made dinner for her and we shared laughs about the things we could not fix and complained about the things we no longer had time for.

She and I also both loved to look at Pinterest together and try to accomplish the craziest craft projects in the wee hours of the morning while my father was at work. Over the months we shared together, we made countless projects. One of the most fun projects I remember completing with her was a plastic candy cane wreath tangled in a mess of hot glue stick strings and colorful ribbon which we hung on our door in preparation for Christmas. My mother and I had never been closer. I was there for every emergency 911 call, and every ambulance trip. I was there for her panic and anxiety attacks which I soothed with funny Liza Kosher Target YouTube videos, and I was there for almost every breath she took after that. The one breath I wasn’t there for, was her last. I had just fallen asleep for a short nap after being exhausted from staying up the night before and when I woke up to airy whisper of her breathing machine no longer being positioned on her nose, I knew her fate had been sealed. Her body had enough of fighting through it all, and laid down its defense to finally rest. Rest easy, Mom and thank you for everything! 

She was gone, but in my heart she will never be forgotten. All the stories we shared late at night through my treatment and hers, all the crazy adventures we had together like gathering free Slurpees on every 7/11, and the laughs we shared together directed at life and its complexities…those memories will always live on in my heart. After her passing, a tree was planted in her memory at the elementary school I attended as well as the school she loved to visit in her crazy costumes to read to the children that loved her. My family and I visit often, sometimes bringing flowers or decorations to hang on her tree for special occasions. After losing my grandmother a year later after my mom, we had a tree planted for her memorial as well, directly across my mother’s. So when we go the park, I get to visit both my grandma AND my mom. It’s going to be 5 years next month since we lost my mom. It still feels like yesterday that she left us. Some days are better than others, but I still have my moments where I break down and let myself feel the weight of it all and how she is no longer here. But the bond her and I had together will live on forever and I will never again have a friend like her. Love you! 😘