My mom got Lung Cancer when I was 14, and she had never smoked a day in her life. My first reaction was that "life is not fair." There is no possible explanation for someone to get Lung Cancer when they have never smoked a day in their life! From the time I was 14 until I was 19 my mother went through surgery to remove the Tumor in her Lung, 14 rounds of Chemotherapy and 12 rounds of Radiation to remove the Cancer. Throughout my teen years my mother was a fighter and fought hard to provide my brother and I with a normal childhood. But there were parts of my childhood that were not typical. When my mom was having Chemotherapy or Radiation she was often very sick. She was too sick to drive my brother and I, and too sick to cook dinners. Lucky for us we lived in an amazing neighborhood where neighbors and friends brought us food and drove my brother and I where we needed to go until I got my license at 17.
Many of my friends know about my mother getting Cancer and the technical aspects of it but many of you do not know what I went through emotionally. My mom's Cancer spread rapidly when I was 19, the summer after my Freshmen year of College. She was in a wheelchair for about 6 months. My father was amazing and dedicated to my mother. Watching him take care of my mother was truly inspiring, but being the oldest I also took care of my mother. I made her food, took her to the bathroom and brought her anything that she needed. I was a 19 year old teenager, a child, and I was taking care of my mother. My mother was also in the hospital that Spring. My brother and I were home by ourselves. We cooked for ourselves and took care of each other. My Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Amy came to take care of us and my mother's best friends Marilyn and Martha came from Florida. However, my brother and I still took care of each other. My mother passed away that summer in July 2014. Watching her die, taking care of my own mother as a child and depending on friends and neighbors scarred me. I became very depressed and withdrawn. I went to psychologists, psychiatrists, art therapy and music therapy. I was self destructive to myself. I know I could not have made it through without the love my friends and family. A mother dying stays with you your whole life. I am still scarred from that experience and still become depressed and anxious. I have a lot of difficulty taking care of my family when they are sick because images like a camera come back to haunt me of my mother in a hospital bed dying from Lung Cancer. Thanks everyone for reading the real story about me and I thank my husband Matt, my father and my brother and my stepmother and all my friends for helping me through my depression.
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