And then...

Friday, they finally received word of an open bed at MGH and off I went in the ambulance with my sister. I didn’t even remember she had been with me until she reminded me. She held my hand and I squeezed each time we went over a bump because each bump hurt so much.

I barely remember meeting the doctor or even the discussions I had with him. The word “cancer” was mentioned, but it still seems surreal to me. I don’t think I really understood what was happening. Laurie, my sister, says I was talking about all my investments and my will and trying to figure out if everything was in order, but I don’t remember doing that. She said I was really scaring her by talking like that, but I honestly only maybe vaguely remember it.

Because there was some sort of cancer diagnosis in the works, the doctor couldn’t operate on my leg immediately. Putting a rod through the bone of someone with cancer in their leg would spread the cancer so there would be no fixing of the bone until an official diagnosis was handed down. In the meantime, he put an external fixator on my leg so I wouldn’t have to be in traction anymore.

It’s a type of traction, but it’s fixed so no one can knock it. It’s an external rod that is attached to my bone at the top and the bottom and set to a fixed length so my leg is fixed. The doctor did that on Sunday night, I believe. It might have been a little better, but it still wasn’t great and I was still on lots of pain killers and I still have memory gaps from that time.

I remember I missed my kids and I was worried about them tremendously. They didn’t want to come to the hospital and it wouldn’t have been good for them to see me in that kind of pain so they did not visit. It was very hard for all three of us.

Since my ex-husband and I split up, the girls and I have been a team especially because their dad is so far away. Besides that, they were still little. When this all started, they were 5 ½ and almost 7; kindergarten and second grade. And, even when they were babies and Jeff and I were still together, I was a stay-at-home Mom so they were always with me. Now they had to get used to a new house, new schools, new friends, no Mom and Duncan’s rules. It was just as hard, if not harder, for Duncan, too.