More than a month was spent in the hospital recovering. Everyone especially the mom was ready to get the heck out of there. It had been a slow process because even though the doctor's said she was ready to leave she still had a lot of recovering to do. She'd be leaving the hospital with a 10 inch open wound that needed a machine to help it heal. She was no where near out of the woods where this was concerned. Infection was still a big concern too, which was why the doctors wanted her to slowly heal from the inside outward . Everyone would have to keep her sterile. A lot had to be learned. Everyone had to step up to the plate while the mom had to humble herself.
It was nearing the end of the youngest daughter’s vacation and she would need to return to work soon. The oldest daughter would take her place as the one that would take on the daily responsibilities. She'd spoken with her employer and let them know the new situation and explained that she would need to take on more responsibilities with her mother and would need time off and a flexible schedule to be with her. Everyone there was aware of the situation and never gave her any problems. They simply worked around her needing this time. Living next door made it easy to just get up at 3am and walk over to get into bed with her mom and watch over her.
Unless you have gone through something like this you don't realize just how precious watching your sick mother sleeping is. While she was sleeping she wasn't in any pain and while she was sleeping she didn't have to remember how very sick she was. Sleep truly was a blessing at times.
The oldest daughter was to have the same schedule as the previous daughter, which meant the husband was to come home at 1pm. That again hardly ever happened. It was said from mutual co-workers of both the husband and his son-in-law that he was volunteering to work late because he didn't have to be home, that his wife was taken care of. He was running any and all errands he could think of and showing up multiple times a week to the wife's oncology doctor's office by himself and when his wife had no scheduled appointments. Why? They didn't know the answer to that, but he did frequently say that he loved their coffee. And he would come home with tons of unused coffee cups, lids, and even packs of closed coffee. He'd joke about doing what he had to do to save money. Even if that meant stealing products from a cancer hospital.
Any time it was brought up that he never came home on time the daughters were made to feel guilty about their mother. That was his go to every single time. Anything to take the heat off of himself. He was good at it too, he was good at manipulating you into thinking you were the one in the wrong. Things continued to get progressively worse since both daughters stopped bringing it up because their mom started to see what was going on and they didn't want her to think they were upset because they had to stay a little longer and watch her.
Never did they want their mom to feel like she was a burden or unloved. This woman had on numerous occasions put her life on hold to help them when they needed her the most. She moved in with her oldest daughter to help with the bills when she had a medical emergency and couldn't work for months. She ended up staying there even after it wasn't necessary anymore because they enjoyed living with each other. She'd also helped her youngest daughter one summer when she went through a divorce, depression, and surgery recovery all at the same time. Those months were rough, but she'd come over at 2am when her daughter was crying in pain and she'd help her, even if that meant just sitting there and watching her until she fell asleep. That's the type of loving woman she had been and now it was her turn, now she was the one that needed their help and they were happy to give it.
It just angered them that her husband wasn't putting in that same effort. She too had saved his life multiple times early on. He had a rough childhood and had it not been for her everyone knew he'd be living a very different life. He might even be in prison like one of his brothers or living on the streets like his other brother.
Their mom had often explained in detail all about his childhood and to be honest that was the reason everyone gave him a pass on how badly he treated them. They felt bad for the man, but you can only take so much. Your childhood shouldn't define you, but in this case it was looking more and more like his did.
The daughters both wondered what the husband was doing during the times he wasn't at home. They wondered why he’d leave at 1am which was hours early to work when he wasn't scheduled to be there until after 4am. They wondered who he was on the phone with for hours and hours at a time. Who he was messaging all day at work because it wasn't his wife when he was caught frequently hiding in the back on his phone by co-workers and management. Even when he would get home late he'd still spend 30 to 45 minutes downstairs doing who knows what with his phone dinging with message after message.
It got harder and harder for the daughters to hide their disdain for the husband. Even their mom was starting to see what was brewing. She began to constantly defend the husband's behavior. She said she knew he was gone longer than he should have been, but she was okay with it. She did wonder where he would be, but she wasn't herself so she let it be. She let a lot of things go once she got sick. It was sad to see the super strong out spoken woman go from telling you how it was to allowing you to do things you shouldn't be doing all for the sake of keeping peace.
She even told her daughters if it was too much for them they could leave whenever they needed to and that she would be okay alone. There was no way they would leave her alone though, she'd expressed that she was afraid to be alone more than once. She worried she would fall and further injure herself. It was then that both daughters decided to try and let things go fully for their mother’s sake. The last thing they wanted was for their mom to think that they didn't want to be with her because that couldn't be further from the truth. It was just their anger for the husband that caused these reactions from them.
As the days turned into weeks and weeks into months things began to get a little better. The mother began getting stronger and healing from her multiple surgeries. Both daughters had taken their turns sitting with the mom spending quality time with her laughing and just having fun with her. There were still lots of hurdles everyone had to get through, but all in all things were looking up. The mom still needed medical care and the daughters were doing their part to take care of the medical needs of their mom on a daily basis which included helping her bathe, brushing her hair, cleaning, packing, and dressing her still open wound. It was a lot of work, but everyone was taking their turns and they had all gotten used to their routine.
The mom's doctor had decided to resume her chemo once the belly wound had almost healed. It was a slow processes to get it fully healed because after every treatment a little bit would open up again and cause it to drain. It was always one step forward and two steps back with her treatments, but it had to be done. Chemo was too important to keep pushing it back. Fighting the cancer had to be their main focus. Putting up with a stubborn wound would have to take a back seat in priorities.
With the mom being in stage 4 the doctors thought it was best to give her an aggressive chemo treatment. She went from once every two weeks to once a week. The more treatments she had to more her hair started to fall out. Once the hair on her head and her eye brows and lashes began to fall it sent her further into a depression. She'd always loved her hair and to have to see it fall out in chunks was devastating for the mom.
Everyone tried to tell her it was okay and that it didn't look bad, but she didn't buy it. They even offered to help her cut it so she wouldn't have to keep dealing with it. The mom had agreed to have them shave her head multiple times, but every time she sat down ready she'd cry and change her mind. It was too hard for her to get rid of one of the only things she had left that made her feel like a woman. No one pushed her to do anything she didn't want to do, they wanted her to do it when she was ready. Whenever that day was she'd let them all know.
Every morning around 9 or 10am the youngest daughter would call her mom from work to check in on her. She'd ask her how she slept, what she and her sister were doing, and what she was going to eat for breakfast. On this particular call her mom asked her to get a hold of her brother and ask him to go over to her house after work with his hair clippers to help her shave her head. She said she was finally ready to get rid of her hair. The daughter did what she was told and the brother of course agreed and they made plans to both go over after work and help their mom with this.
With as many times as she'd changed her mind they weren't certain she would follow through with it, but they had been wrong. This time she seemed at ease with the decision. Her son got out his clippers and asked if she was sure. After getting the okay he slowly ran the clippers over her head and began getting rid of the hair that was left.
It didn't take long and with the daughters help they finished and held up a mirror for their mom to see. She looked gorgeous, stunning even. It was as if she were glowing. The mom was very happy with her results. She'd feared shaving her head would make her look ugly, but she'd been very wrong.
Start Chapter 4 - Money