Sick

I have wanted to write this post for a very long time, but I always knew it would be upsetting to certain people that read it, those directly involved. I guess in some way, the story I am about to tell you, has actually shaped the person that I am today. More than any other event in my life. This wasn't one event though, it was a series of events over a number of years, a catalogue which seems to have fucked me up royally!

I was 12 years old when I was first told that my Mother had a brain tumor, something which would some day soon would have to be operated on. My brother Karl, overheard her telling a family friend and he relayed the conversation back to me, with only 2 years in age difference, we tended to tell each other everything when it involved the family. I was still very much a child and I broke down like any child would do, faced with the prospect of losing their mother.

The first time she was admitted to hospital, she stayed there for over a month, I would see her everyday and in retrospect and compared with what was to come, everyone seemed optimistic, the doctors, my family and my mother. Whilst my Mother was hospitalized I continued to live in my house with my sister and both my brothers, I continued to go to school(Sporadically) and also worked as a glass collector in pubs around my area. When she was operated on, I have no memory of the day or even getting the news that she would be fine and when she was released things pretty much went back to normal, we enjoyed a holiday together, she was the same, funny but volatile character and I loved her.

Later that year, things got worse, very worse. One day, my Mother took my Brother and I shopping for some new clothes, nothing out of the ordinary. But then my Aunt arrived and in a sudden blaze of information, we found ourselves back at the hospital, my Mother was getting re-admitted again, for another surgery. Only this time, her chances were devastatingly low. I remember the day she was operated on so vividly, like it was yesterday in fact. I was there the whole day, just waiting at the hospital. No one knew I was there. A few days before the operation, her doctor sat my whole family down in a room and told us there was only a 30 percent chance that she would survive the operation. She had three tumors, two of them on her spinal column.

When she came around, the relief was palpable and when Karl arrived I was almost giddy. Little did I know that although she had survived the operation, the woman that came around from the anesthetic was not the Mother that I knew.....and loved.

To be continued...