A Little More Bad News

... And if that's not a title to repel a reader, I don't know what is!

The MRI showed my mom has a little bit of cancer in the brain. But it's in a part of the brain I've never heard of, so I'm not sure what to make of that. Must be a pretty small part. My mom said her nurse practitioner was "relieved by how small it was" -- after seeing my mom last week so sleepy, and hearing that she'd been pulled over for "erratic driving," she expected much worse.

So I guess that's good.

She seems okay. It's weird. She's never been an emotive person. And even now, with all this, she has yet to show any real emotion to me. I don't tend to show emotion to her, either, probably because she's always seemed so detached.

So I have no idea how she's really doing. A lot of me is grateful for this, honestly. Facing someone else's darkest fears with them is pretty terrifying, especially when that person is your mother, once the source of all comfort.

I'm encouraging her to pursue options for mental health support, and she already has some connections. Truthfully, even if we were the closest of close, I think it's better for her to lean on someone who is not her child. Surely she feels some impulse to protect me, and that will keep her from getting enough support from me.

The thing that sucks about all this, well, a big thing that sucks, is that I remember this sequence from when my father died of a brain cancer five years ago. There's no status quo. You just keep on getting little pieces of bad news, one after another. Even when you know someone is terminal, there's still denial and hope and prayer that it will be a long and easy journey. And each time you get a piece of bad news, you have to face that judgment and disappointment all over again. And it stuns and hurts and smarts each time, all over again.