MY STORY TO TELL

CANCER STRIKES AGAIN

Just when things in my life seemed like they could not get any better, I get kicked again. During our engagement, Amy and I had moved into my mother’s house on a temporary basis while we found a house suitable for our very large family. Of course, it was not ideal, but looking back on it, again, God definitely knows what he is doing. My mother had been living in a very large home with just my younger sister, Lindsay, since my father had passed. She definitely had the room and I loved it because it gave Amy and my mom a chance to become close.

During this time, Amy and I did everything we could to help mom out. In fact, Amy and I managed to till up my mother’s entire back yard, pull every single weed out of the yard, put topsoil down, level it and then install about 40 pallets of sod. It looked amazing! As I have stated in my previous chapters, this time with my mother was more than I can accurately describe. This time of living with her, while I cherish it, I now know there was more to it.

One of the things you learn as a first responder is to ask the family if the patient is acting normal. Your baseline behavior and mine may be completely different. When you see things out of norm, you learn to pay attention to them. That was the case on June 29, 2010. The 5-year anniversary of my father’s passing. My mother was acting off that day, but at first, I attributed it the date and so I wasn’t too concerned. I never will forget, I cooked dinner for the family and tried to make it a special, happy day and not one of sorrow. We ate dinner, Amy and I cleaned up after dinner, and I never will forget what happened next. It is what nightmares are made of.

After dinner, my mother made a very nasty remark, I forget exactly what she said. However, I remember I said something along the lines, “At least we had a good dinner you didn’t have to cook or clean and you have family with you”. That comment did not ease her frustrations, anger or whatever feelings she had at that moment. She proceeded to berate me like she hadn’t years, all in front of Amy, the girls and Lindsay. It wasn’t just that she was being mean, which she was saying some nasty, nasty things. Humiliating things, things that I know she would never say in front of anyone. It was at this point, I stopped being confused and I became concerned. I immediately stopped her, I told her something was wrong and that we needed to go right then to the ER to get her head examined. Oh my God, when I said that, it was like fireworks or pouring gasoline on a fire. I can only assume that she thought I was calling her crazy and with her mother being crazy, she took offense to it. Though I never said the word crazy at all, I did imply that something was wrong inside her head.

That was it, she completely lost it. She threw us all out of the house, told me I was never welcomed back. During this time, when she was throwing us out, I was pleading with my mother to let me get her checked out. I was now heated, maybe animated is a better word. I was definitely concerned and during this time, I slung my hands up and when I did, my 20-ounce coke bottle slung out of my hand and of course it hit a window down by the floor and broke one of the panes of glass. I immediately apologized and started to clean up the glass. She would have none of it, we were to get out things and get out of her house. Unfortunately, we had nowhere to go, so we went to a hotel. Leaving a lot of our stuff behind. The next day, Amy went by the house to gather clothes for the girls, very concerned with what she was going to encounter, she felt relieved to find out my mom was not at the house. Amy having a key, went in and gather the clothes. My mother came home, found Amy there, called the cops and more hell broke out. Amy said my mother was lying to the cops about the night before and what all had occurred. Amy could not believe the way she was being treated and she definitely agreed with me that mom needed to be checked out at a medical facility or an ER.

When I learned of everything that had happened with Amy, my mom and the cops, I immediately called everyone I knew close to my mom. I called my older sister, I called my cousin Tammy, who was my mom’s sisters’ daughter who was close to my mom, I called my cousin Amy, who was my father’s niece and she was close to my mother as well as I called my cousin Ralph, who was my cousin Amy’s older brother and he too was close to my mom. All of them with the exception of Ralph told me that mom had already told them was happened and she was and is fine and that I just pissed mom off. I BEGGED them all and I mean BEGGED them to take mom down to the hospital and get her checkout immediately. None of them would listen. They said that mom made it very clear that I was not to contact her, she didn’t want to see me or my children. That alone should have let people know that something was wrong with mom. Mom loved my kids and she had grown to love Amy and her kids too at that point. Yet, she would have nothing to do with any of them.

I found out later, that it was during this time, my mother had been telling lies, straight up falsehoods about me. For instance, that she gave me $100,000 for me to start my business and I never paid a penny back. Lie. I paid back over $40,000 of that money and thankfully had the records to prove it. She also made lies about other random things, for instance one day my aunt called my mom to check in and my mom told her she had been down at the funeral home planning her funeral for the future. That was learned later to be a complete fabrication, it never happened. She never went to the funeral home and she definitely didn’t plan her funeral. So of course, these things did not come to light yet. All I knew is that my mother would not see me or my kids and people were treating me like I had abused or assaulted my mother.

Just like everything else in life, time heals all wounds. It was November, close to Thanksgiving, almost 6 months since this all happened and we had not been around my mom at all during that time. I can’t recall how things occurred that enabled us to reconnect, yet it did. At this point, Amy and I had a huge 6-bedroom house, a very nice house and we invited mom and Lindsay over for Thanksgiving. Mom was blown away and it was a nice, but still awkward day. I know that mom told Tammy about it and said she had a really good time, which was nice to hear. Things were definitely still tense, because I knew something was wrong with my mom.

The next month went by and we didn’t speak a lot. I was still just letting her contact me. With the 20th coming up, Amy, myself and the kids were going to be in Gatlinburg for our wedding. I had rented a large cabin and I will never forget, my mom called me the night before my wedding while were we were in Gatlinburg and told me she wished she could come. I told her to pack her bags and I would pay for her and Lindsay’s transportation to Gatlinburg and that we had plenty of room and that it would mean the world to me if she came. I could tell that she was off, again something was not right. She turned down the offer and just said she didn’t think she could make the trip, but that she wanted us to know that she really wanted to be there. That alone made me feel better.

Fast forward to March 2012, I had just arrived at the fire station for my 24-hour shift around 715 in the morning. I never will forget, I received a phone all from my older sister, you have to understand, she never calls me. I knew something was wrong. She then tells me that during the day before, mom had gone to get her hair done at the same place she had for years and years and that mom had to get one of the ladies in the beauty shop to take her home because she could not remember where she lived. They called my older sister and let her know what was going on and she spoke to mom. The next day, when my older sister called my mom that morning, mom still seemed off. The same way she seemed off 8 months prior when I BEGGED people to get her checked out. One thing I learned with my father’s cancer, is the doctor telling us that the first sign of cancer is usually altered mental status, or altered behavior, people doing things that they normally would never do. I witnessed that in mom’s behavior, but no one wanted to listen.

Now you have to understand, even when my older sister learned that my mom could not drive herself home, she could not remember where she lived, my older sister didn’t get in the car and drive the 1-hour drive to Birmingham. NOPE. She didn’t call me. She didn’t call 911. She waited, she didn’t call me until the next day, but she did call me. They don’t want to listen to me and then talk shit about me, but when shit gets real, gets serious, things need handling, who do they call, me. I took off work immediately and went straight to my mom’s house. I called 911 and had them transport her to the best hospital in Birmingham. I didn’t even do a true assessment on my mother prior to calling 911 because I already knew something was wrong.

I called Amy on my way to my moms and again once I was going to the ER. The doctors at the ER rushed my mom to get an MRI done on her head. Exactly what I asked for 8 months prior. They came back a short while later and said it appeared that my mom had a brain bleed and a lot of swelling in her brain. They felt that she did not have a stroke and that quite possibly it could be a brain tumor and they wanted to do a CT scan to verify this. They took her and did a CT scan right then. I called Amy again, she came down to the ER, we all knew things were not good. I called my older sister and my cousins Tammy, Ralph, Amy and a list of other family members. They brought my mom in and it didn’t take them long to come back with the news.

My mom had Stage IV brain cancer; she had a Glioblastoma brain tumor. Brain cancer and pancreatic cancer are two of the deadliest types of cancer. I was not sitting there trying to comprehend how both of my parents ended up with the absolute worst cancers known to man. My father I could understand, he was a firefighter for 40 years, firefighters have a 78% higher chance to get cancer than the average person. My mom on the other hand, she wasn’t overweight, she never drank alcohol, she never smoked, she exercised, she ate very healthy, yet here we were.

Later that evening when they admitted my mom, Amy and I were speaking with the oncologist surgeon who was planning on performing surgery. That surgeon told Amy and I that the tumor had probably been growing for 8 or 9 months. The exact time I noticed the change in my mom. Now, 8 months later, they were scheduling her for a major brain surgery. One that I wished had never taken place. The surgery left my mom like a zombie. Zero emotion. When she came out of the surgery, the only person she knew was me. She didn’t even know Lindsay’s name or my older sister’s name at first. She actually seemed really good when she came out of surgery, for a brief moment I was relieved. That feeling dd not last long though.

I can honestly say, there was only 1 time in the next 3 months that I was able to carry on a conversation with my mom as though nothing was wrong. It was during another hospital stay at which point her sodium levels were so low, she was in need of them to be corrected. We stayed up late into the night talking. A talk I will cherish forever. A talk, I never got to have with my father. This was another time when I was called over to my mom’s house and had to facilitate the medics transporting my mom back to the ER. What I was unaware of at the time, my cousin Tammy who was closer to my mom’s age than mine, was advised by my mom that she wanted to change her will. The two sitters we hired to stay with my mom around the clock, heard everything. I had zero knowledge of that conversation and honestly never cared about her will. Come to find out though, during the time my mother was upset with me, she began the process to change her will and to cut me out of it completely. I didn’t know, I never asked about a will, never once. Not with my father and certainly not with my mother. She actually brought it up to me twice though following her attempted conversation with her niece, my cousin Tammy. The first time was that morning when we were both in the ER, after she tried to get Tammy to right it down for her, Tammy refused. Again, I can not state enough times that I was not privy to her bringing this up to Tammy. She did bring it up to me in the ER. She asked me for a piece of paper, I wasn’t sure why, but I went and got her one with a pen. She was lying flat on her back in the ER and couldn’t write that way, so she asked me to write down everything she said. I did just ask she asked.

Apparently, she had her original will after my father passed away. In that will, she left most everything to my younger sister Lindsay in a special needs trust. The reason why, she said that day, was that she honestly thought she would live a much longer life, as her mother did. That she would not have the money then that she has at this time. So, her last will and testament was to give Lindsay, my older sister and myself each $500,000 and the remainder to be split between my older sister and myself. Lindsay’s money was to be put into a special needs trust and Tammy would be the executor of the estate and over Lindsay’s trust. She told me that day that she did not want to put that burden on either myself or my older sister because when she handled it for her sister, Carole, it was too much for a grieving relative. I didn’t question her, I didn’t comment, I wrote down everything word, for word as she dictated to me what she wanted done. In fact, once I was done writing it down, she read over it and correct the spelling of a name of an attorney she had used for the special needs trust. I believe that he reading it and correcting the spelling was a sure sign that she was obviously in the right state of mind. Next, she told me she needed two witnesses, non-family to sign it. She insisted I go right then and there to get 2 nurses or doctors to sign it. Problem was, they weren’t legally able to according to the hospital rules, at least that is what they said. My mother asked me, no she demanded I call the two sitters and get them to come sign it. I called and they were on their way home or just leaving moms if I remember correctly. They asked me if I could meet them at Wendy’s which was halfway between. I told my mom and she told me to go right then and meet them. I apologized to both of the sitters and the one of them told me, “Mark, I would never sign this usually, except that I heard her tell Tammy this morning she wanted this done and Tammy refused to listen to her.” With that said, they both witnessed the will and signed it.

Simple enough, right, wrong. Long story short, it will be long next chapter unfortunately, my mother passed away maybe a month or so later. Tammy, being the executor of estate, using my family’s money, hired an attorney and fought that will from being executed since the 2 witnesses did not actually see my mother sign the will. Keep in mind though, she along with the 2 people who witnessed the will, heard my mom telling Tammy this is what she wanted. Instead, Tammy went with the old will and tried to tell everyone that I pushed my mom to change her will.

What many people don’t know is that the one night in the hospital that my mom and I sat up talking the night away, my mom apologized to me. She apologized to me for doing and saying terrible things to me and about me. I didn’t know at the time that she had been spreading lies about me and trying to cut me out of her will completely, I had no idea. I told her not to apologize and that I loved her and she insisted that she wanted to call the bank the next day and transfer $500,000 to me. She told me I was going to get screwed, but I refused to let her do it. I told her I just wanted her to get better and I didn’t care about her money. The sad part is, everyone chose to believe the lies my mom said during the time she was angry with me. I guess it was easier for them to accept the lies, instead of realizing she was lying because she was in fact suffering from brain cancer at that time. The very same, exact time I BEGGED them to take her to get her head examined. I don’t believe my mother would have survived brain cancer had we found it right away, I do believe that my mother would have lived a longer, more dignified life had those people listened to my pleas and took my mom to the hospital then. I don know that if they had taken her to the ER and we found out she had brain cancer then, I never would have family members curse me and tell me I never loved my mother and I was always just after her money. Yes, I did have a so-called “Christian” family member say that to me on the phone. I was forever cast as a villain who pushed my dying mother into changing her will all because I wanted her money. FML.