Pains...

Mum apologised. "Why? Why are you apologising?" I asked. We were talking about breastfeeding, about my sister-in-law who has been breastfeeding since my nephew's birth. Somehow, mum remembered that when I was still a baby, she only breastfed me for a little while and had to stop, whereas my brother was breastfed till he was many months old. "I had to go to work, and it hurt a lot to squeeze out milk..."
She said I once 'complained' about not having been breastfed--something I don't remember at all. She said she was sorry that she stopped with me, because breastfed babies are healthier and have a stronger bond with the mother. I laughed, because it was very silly what she was saying. Am I not (relatively) healthy? Do I not have a strong, beautiful bond with my mother...?

The weather has been so cold that mum went to the hot springs and enjoyed a nice lunch and afternoon soaking in the natural springs close to where she lives. She said she felt much relieved, and for a while her aches and pains went away, so was really basking in the temporary break from her almost constant physical ordeals. And she began, at her own initiative, to talk about her condition.

She went to see her main physician last Friday, and she complained that her elbow joints and the area under her armpits are getting very painful and sore. The doctor prescribed her a new kind of painkiller, a drug that lasts up to twelve hours, she said, compared to the one she used before which lasts only up to six hours. "It's the lymph node," she said, "When it hurts like this, it means that the lymph node is swelling."  Which in turn means that it has become infected... Infected, most likely, with cancerous cells. All the doctor could do is prescribe painkillers, and in two days time, she will have her next chemotherapy.

Tomorrow though, she will go meet the neurosurgeon who first confirmed that her tumour had spread to the spine area. It's been almost four months since she last saw him, and she wants to have an assessment of her situation. Mum has been told that if her pains and sores get to the point where she cannot use her arm anymore, she must immediately call the neurosurgeon. On her fridge is a hotline that she must call, and surgery will be conducted within a day or two. Because when, or if, that time comes, the her condition will have become so critical that surgery  is the only way to stop the tumour growing on the spine from causing permanent nerve damage, or even paralysis...

I thanked her for telling me. However sad  I felt, however traumatised and hurt by the latest report  of her condition, I can only accept. I bid her good night, and wished her a beautiful sleep... Because in those couple of hours, when she is in the land of sleep, there are no pains, no sores, no doctors, no cancer cells...