Clean as a whistle

My mom died of colon cancer in 1992. It was just eight or nine months before she died when she called to tell me she had been diagnosed. The cancer, which I have since learned is usually one of the slower moving types of cancer, had probably been in her system for several years. She told me that when my dad was ill, she knew that “something wasn’t right” with her own health, but she never saw a doctor because she didn’t want to add a layer of the unknown on top of the unknown issues associated with Dad. He died in 1989. Mom never said a word about her own health at that time as she worried about how to wade through the piles of paperwork associated with Social Security, hospital bills, and just learning how to live on her own.

So it took her over two years after my dad’s death before she saw a doctor and had a colonoscopy. By that time the cancer had been at work inside her for years. She proceeded with chemotherapy on the doctor’s suggestion, but the cancer had already moved into her liver. She was living in Missouri and I was in South Dakota. I left my job (with my husband’s support and admonition, “you’ll regret it if you don’t spend this time with your mother”) and spent the bulk of the last six months of my mother’s life living with her in her home where she wanted to die. She didn’t want to go to a nursing home. I did my best to provide her with the proper and necessary care. We mutually agreed to end the chemotherapy when I finally convinced the doctor to be honest about the results. Doctors are, after all, in the business of healing and it was difficult for this particular doctor to be forthright about my mother’s prognosis: the chemo wasn’t going to make her well and her quality of life was simply declining.

Mom was able to die at home and with the care of 24/7 healthcare workers.

And I am so thankful to have been given those six months with my mom. We didn’t mend all of our fences, but I will never forget about two weeks before she died she sat in the kitchenette and said quietly to me, “We ended up being pretty good friends, didn’t we.” It was a statement, not a question. And while many mothers and daughters might find it odd to hear such an exchange between my mother and me, it was as though years of hurt had been healed. She was ready to move on to the next life.

Her mother had colon cancer when she died too. Now Grandma was 96 or 97 when she passed away so maybe she died of colon cancer or maybe she died from old age. Nevertheless, it’s clear that colon cancer runs in my family – at least on my mother’s side.

I was about 40 years old when I realized what I was up against, and reported to my doctor. At that point she performed a sigmoidoscopy (a more limited colonoscopy) and in the next 10 years I had a couple of those. That’s a more limited view of the colon performed right in the doctor’s office. Then I “graduated” to a full colonoscopy every five years.

This week I had my first virtual colonoscopy. The preparation is much the same as previous experiences and is still the worst part of the exam. Not eating for more than 24 hours prior and drinking a god-awful mixture devised to clear out the colon and whose taste is supposed to be mitigated by adding a couple of packets of Crystal Light (which I’ve never liked either). For me, it takes about three hours of drinking that stuff to get emptied out. With the virtual colonoscopy I also had to down two different cocktails to provide contrast so the radiologist can figure out what s/he is seeing when the pictures were taken.

All in all, I prefer this new method because there is no need for drugs to make me sleepy during the exam. I didn’t wake up in mid-exam screaming about the pain of whatever prod they were sticking up my tortuous colon (I always thought that the one-letter difference between tortuous and torturous was ironic for that reason). I could drive myself to and from the hospital to get the job done. It only took about 15 minutes. Plus, the virtual colonoscopy provides a faint image of mechanisms outside of the colon so the docs can get a hint if anything is awry. If they do find something, they can arrange on the same day to dive inside and cut out whatever needs to be gone (that would require some sort of anesthesia, of course).

That’s a long way of saying, I’m just fine, thank you very much. Clean as a whistle, as one radiologist told me years ago. I’m good for another five or maybe even 10 years (although I think I’ll press for five given my family history).

Oh, that the insides of a car could go that long without going under the hood for an investigation.

One day we’ll be able to attack other cancers before they become a problem. My husband’s prostate cancer was caught early and removed with very delicate surgery. As the years progress, we continue to hope and have more assurance that it will not recur. As I hurt so for my friends who battle to return to good health after radical mastectomies, I also pray that cures will be found for all cancers so that none of us will be faced with that fear, that worry.

It is best, I think, to realize that, yes, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as the psalmist said, but rather than being braggadocios about that, we are well to approach God and life with humility, acknowledging that we are simply clay pots, so easily broken in so many ways and only mended by the Creator. All of us in one way or another are instruments of God for healing, helping, and just being a listening ear.

And don’t put off getting those preventative exams.

Thank God for God’s “indescribable gifts!”

 

“For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” – Psalm 139:13-14

“But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” – 2 Corinthians 4:7

Share here: