MEMORIES		FINDING TREATMENT FOR A STRICKEN MOM

	My mother was diagnosed with it in May 1992 and finally succumbed to complications following a second liver embolization in September 1994. She welcomed any procedure, no matter how experimental, in the hopes that, even if they did not work for her, that her experience might help save others with carcinoid at a later time.

Some Info, Some Hope But Now Where? Jean's arduous Internet search for information on carcinoid cancer revealed that a research doctor in Sweden named Oberg had some promising, though preliminary, developments underway in the treatment of carcinoid. But was there anyone near home, in Wisconsin, who would treat this cancer, and our suffering mother, this aggressively?

Fortunately, a specialist in oncology at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics was willing to try. This was not a cancer that would respond at all to chemotherapy, so the route was to be largely experimental.

Jean remembered all too vividly the devotion and sacrifice Mom directed in love during my sister's extended illness. Now she would devote, in turn, to the mother she so loved and so now lived to help. With every hospital stay, Jean stayed by Mom's side, armed with her research on carcinoid and taking belabored records on her trusty PowerBook 170 of every daily detail in Mom's life — hoping it would prevent mistreatment and, in its accuracy and detail, ensure progressive and helpful treatment.

When recuperating at home, Mom's medical regimen meant that the domestic refrigerator would never be the same: at any given moment, there was three to five thousand dollars' worth of specialized, usually experimental medications keeping cool.

At the time, I often found myself paralyzed to reach out the way that, deep down, I knew I should and even wanted to. I had my own domestic crises to respond to and, perhaps, realizing that one more aspect of our lives was no longer to be the stylized "norm" of the American dream, I often even forgot how to pray in the midst of this painful uncertainty.

I can recall visiting one weekday noon hour, sitting in the living room across from my mom, laying almost in a tearful trance on the couch, as I talked with Dad and Jean. Why didn't I just kneel at the foot of the couch, take my mother's hand, look her in the way and lovingly comfort her and lift her up to God? It took so little, for a mother I loved so dearly, yet too often I could not do what had been natural, and was always fundamental.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NCSG,
AS THE MEMORY AND TRIBUTE CONTINUES

BACK TO PAGE ONE