GO MOMMA!!!

20 years ago today.... I was a little girl who had just been on her first major road trip.


My uncles, along with some family friends, my sister, and I had driven the 20+ hours from Phoenix to Houston. I had no idea what to expect. I was so conflicted b/c in my mind Houston, Texas looked like a city from an old western movie and yet I knew Mom was there because of MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is the best cancer treatment center in the world. And I had such a hard time picturing this big fancy hospital in the middle of a town made of wood buildings and dirt roads with horses.


Turns out Houston was a lot like Phoenix only GREEN. I'd never seen so many green plants and rainstorms in my young life. And MD Anderson was mind numbingly huge and complex.


And my mother .... was a pumpkin.


That was my first thought anyway. When she had left Phoenix she'd had SOME small amounts of hair left. Now she was completely bald and the medicines they'd given her had made her swell up a fair bit and turn a little orange. Clearly, my mother was a pumpkin.


She was in an isolation room. I could see her through double paned glass and talk to her via intercom. I couldn't hug her or touch her. No one could. The doctors administered drugs to her through long plastic gloves built into the opposite wall and once a week a person in a bubble suit could come through the air lock to clean her room. Everything that came in had to be sterilized.


After 3 days of radiation treatments where she received the same amount of radiation that you would have received if you were at ground zero Hiroshima when the bomb went off, Mom had no immune system left. The littlest bug could kill her inside of a few hours.


I remember watching the day of the transplant. We were all gathered around the window. Momma was SO so excited. She held the catheter line up for us to see as they pushed in 3 BIG fat syringes of bone marrow in through the tubes that came through the wall. She gave us a big cheesy grin and a thumbs up!


We went to check on my Uncle Mike (one of my mother's younger brothers) who was her bone marrow donor afterwards. He had 6 little round needle holes in his butt. 3 of them on each cheek. He told Mom that now he can really say that she was a pain in the ass. (In fact until Mikey passed away 2 years go, every year Momma would call him and thank him for saving her life. And every year he would say "I love ya sis. You're welcome but you're still a pain in the ass" lol).


That was 20 years ago. And I still bawl like a pathetic baby every time I really think about it. I have no words to express how amazingly grateful I am to God, to science, to the doctors and nurses and to my Mother for being a fighter and going to hell and back so that I could grow up with my Mommy. I would not be a live today if it wasn't for her.


In so many ways I owe who I am to my wonderful amazing mother. You could not ask for a more loving and accepting, caring and compassionate person. Don't get me wrong - she'll kick your butt up between your ears if you really need it, but only b/c she loves you. I think she has done a SUPERB job of balancing being a mother and being a friend and that is not an easy line to walk.


For better or for worse, hers in the voice in my head. I found that out when I went to college. She's the one I hear, encouraging me, chastising me, reminding me and helping me.


She hasn't always been perfect but I can say this: Whenever it has been pointed out to her that something she has said or done was not right or hurtful or whatever, she never, EVER did it again.


As a kid, shortly afterwards I presented a picture to her transplant physician, Dr. Anderson (who just happens to share a last name w/ the hospital), it said in big crayon letters "Thank you for saving my Mommy's life". I want to say it again. Preferably through a mega phone from the top of a tall building, on the 6 o'clock news and on the front page of every paper in the world:


Thank you to every one involved in making it happen. Thank so much for saving my Mommy.


20 years baby. Here's to 20 more and many, many more after that!!!