Laughing All the Way (Part I)

I spent a strange two weeks with my mother in September 2006. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a right mastectomy within a few weeks of her diagnosis. Since my mom and dad are divorced, and my brothers both have jobs and rugrats that require their daily attention, I drove from Nashville to Lawton, Oklahoma and planned to stay as long as mom needed me.

Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not the golden child, the darling favorite, always there to lend a helping hand, the dutiful daughter, giving and loving. Au contraire! Frankly, I’ve been a huge pain to my folks. They should both be worried into early graves. It’s amazing they still talk to me. And taking care of mom was not some altruistic act to get me a larger hunk of her amassed fortune, which is comprised mostly of her collection of odd doilies and placemats that have sprouted on top of every piece of her furniture over the last couple of years.

I’ve just realized that my parents are aging and their care will eventually rest on the shoulders of their three children. I believe I can safely speak for my brothers when I say we would do anything for them. We’d take them both into our homes at a moment’s notice (probably not together, since they’ve been divorced for nearly twenty years…although that would be an interesting family dynamic, wouldn’t it? Having mom and dad living together again in their final days on earth? Yeah, good luck on that happening!)

Fortunately for my brothers and me, the days of finding a place for the walker and oxygen tank and wiping wrinkly butts are a long way off. Despite the fact that mom is an unbelievable 64 and my dad just hit 70, both parents are very healthy.

But then there was this thing about mom’s breast cancer. There is no history of breast cancer or any other kind of cancer in our family. I suspected (and her doctors actually agreed) that mom’s cancer was likely caused by something more environmental (like her sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits) combined with a twenty-year stint on the post-hysterectomy drug Premarin. Her doctors and I both agreed that she wouldn’t likely get cancer again…IF she started taking care of herself.