The room is cold and sterile.  My mother, who is battling stage 4 lung cancer, is in a turtle neck and heavy sweater even though its in the 80s outside because she is always cold now after several chemo treatments.  Her hair is thinning and her face is a little puffy from the steroid shots she gets to mitigate the effects of the chemo.  We wait, as one always does, for the doctor to get to us.  It seems there are so many doctors, and yet they also seem perpetually overbooked so that we are always waiting on them and given the name patient as if to remind us as we wait to be patient. My mother waits patiently because she is in pain, not from the cancer but from her rheumatoid arthritis which is flaring up.  This should be a good week – a week for doing things and having energy.  Instead it is a week of pain in her wrists and shoulders.  She can’t sleep, can’t sew during the day and so just sits.  She’s bored, and in pain and sad.

The doctor finally comes in.  He is young and knowledgeable about arthritis but not about the desperation of pain and the fears of one who is facing her own death in the next months.  My mother’s tears unnerve him and I can tell he is anxious to get out of the room.  He never says her name.  He kept us waiting for 45 minutes, but only gives us 10.  He suggests alleve, but my mother reminds him that he has told her not to take this – ah, yes, her liver function is down so she can’t.  And tylenol isn’t working, huh.  She tells him that she has two Vicodin that she is holding onto for if it gets really bad, that she almost took one because even with a sleeping pill the pain is such that at night she can’t sleep.   He offers to increase her prednesone but says she’ll have to deal with the increase in side effects, she agrees.   At home later my mother says she has no idea what the side effects are, so we look them up. He nonchalantly comments that it may very well be pain from the chemo and not from arthritis.

We leave and my mother is worn out and worn down.  And she’s really gotten nothing for the pain.  The extra prednesone seems to help a little as the day goes by; we sit together and talk, I get her peanut butter and jelly crackers for a snack.  This is her work now – keeping a binder with all her medications and checking their side effects, hiring a nutritionist to assist in finding a treatment supporting diet, keeping track of all her appointments.

The sun is rising, and several quail are -well running as quail do, through the back yard (I’m in Arizona).   We’re going to find a spa this week and get massages.  It’s going to be a beautiful day here and I will cherish this time I have with my mother and my father.

Peace to you, Christine