Quick Update # 2: More Cancer (as if I really need this in my life)

So, I already posted this on facebook, but I said I was going to post it on here as well, so here it is:

I'm procrastinating right now on writing a paper for school, but I felt like it was time for you people to know this. No offense to any of you who read this, but I feel like if you are important to me, then you already know what I'm about to say. If not, I'm sorry that this (or facebook, if that was how you had to hear about it) is the way you have to hear about it. What's that?? Get to the point already, you say?? Sorry.

My mom was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer towards the beginning of last month. She was on vacation with my step-dad's aunt in Puerto Rico and on the last night she did a self breast exam (which she never does, and I mean NEVER, so don't ask me why she did one aside from the fact that this was how she found the cancer, so it ended up being a good thing :)) and found it on herself. On 2 / 24 she had a lumpectomy, in which they removed the lump and 12 lymph nodes, only one of which came back as having something cancerous on it. Although the prognosis is good, she still has to go through chemo and radiation and be on an estrogen pill for five years. She starts chemo on monday (3 / 28).

Just wanted to inform the blog world of what's going on. I know that the process is going to be long and hard for everyone, but I just have to remember that when it's over my mom is going to be fine. The surgeon even told her that "you're gonna die, but you're not gonna die from this" :)

It's so hard to come home and see her upset, but there's a part of me that wants to keep coming home every weekend like I have been so that I don't miss any major changes (she's supposed to lose all her hair from the chemo, and I met her in the city on friday so she could get a wig...it's nice and curly and like her hair now, except a little red). I feel bad for my brother because although I know he knows he can come home any time he wants, and he is not really that far away (he is on Long Island), he hasn't said that he wants to come home any time soon, and he keeps saying that he can't wait to come home for his spring break (in the middle of April...like from Passover until the end of April). He has been calling our mom and talking to her every night throughout all of this (like he has been doing every night anyway since he started the program on Long Island), but I just can't even imagine how hard this is for him. It's hard enough for me, and I've been coming home every weekend and trying to see my mom in the city (that's where the surgery was, and where the chemo's going to be) whenever I can...while still trying to maintain / grow my social life in the city. It's hard. As much as I want to grow up and have a life in the city away from my mom, I feel like a little girl more than ever right now, and sometimes I just want my mommy.

I know that she enjoys it when I come home on the weekends, so I'm not going to stop doing so. I also want to keep coming home to be here for her and support her (even though I know she has friends and it's not like she's never lived alone before). But sometimes, like I said, it's hard to see her upset, and it doesn't mean we don't still fight about stuff. ::SHRUG:: I think that's all for now. More soon.

--Emily