In our face, mortality

I know I made a post a couple months ago about a former classmate of mine who passed away, but today I had another brush with thoughts of mortality stemming from something a little more close to home.

Around November of this year I found out my mother had developed a tumour on her liver. Our family had never had any major history of tumours of any kind, and the only death I could remember was my great-grandmother succumbing to breast cancer when I was 5. When I heard the news I was... shaken, to say the least. After a number of biopsies and scans we found out that while the tumour wasn't cancerous, it had spread to her stomach and other organs.

Today was the first major surgery to remove most of the tumour, and I can say without a doubt that I will never get used to this feeling. Because my mom has issues with her blood and the beating speed of her heart, there was a chance that she could bleed out on the operating table and die; this fact was revealed to me well prior to the operation, and as a result I got numerous talks starting with "If something were to happen..." and ending with tears. Being the oldest child, I would be responsible for keeping my siblings in touch with each other (my sister and I have a different father than my brother) in the event we got split up. I would have enough money to pay for the rest of my time in university, but ultimately, I would be losing someone very dear to me.

Needless to say I was a wreck today. I had horrible feelings of dread which kept creeping up on me, subsiding, then catching me unawares when I least expected it. Every vibration of my cell phone or ring of my work phone made me think that I was getting the dreaded "something has gone wrong" phone call that would shatter my world.

But thanks to some very good friends and some healthy distraction in the form of (gasp) productivity, the time passed and I was gratified to find out that my mom was out of the recovery room and in a ward. Upon visiting her, she looked as comfortable as any person who had gone through a five-hour surgery would look. It was a bit disheartening, and since we don't have any idea of how successful the surgery was (thank you, invisible doctors!), there's still an air of uncertainty floating around my head.

I want her to be alright. I want my mom to grow old and be able to meet my kid, if I ever have one. I don't want her to be in pain anymore, and this surgery was one of many steps she has to take in order to get to that point.

Hopefully the rest of the road goes as well as this portion.