assault

I was sitting on our porch this evening when the rains started. Rain falling in the desert is a total assault on the senses. The sky darkens in seconds. Often, the rain blows away as quickly as it blows in, soaking the ground, flooding streets and backyards until you can't remember whether there ever was asphalt and xeroscaping below that water. The drops are cold, cold, cold compared to the hot concrete beneath your feet and the warm ambient air. But oh, the scent. The scent is pungent and raw and forceful. It forces you to stop, to recognize that something around you has changed, is changing, will forever be changed.

I have avoided writing about this for four months. First, because things were uncertain (as if they still aren't). Then because there was news I needed to share with friends who might read it otherwise here. Then because every time I sat down to write this, I choked on my own tears. Then because the only way I knew how to talk about it without repeating that experience was cold and clinical and detached. Then because I just couldn't bring myself to add more finality to this situation.

My mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June. At first, her doctors were hopeful that they could successfully remove her tumor; after all, her cancer had not metastasized and it was caught fairly early as far as this type of cancer goes. Surgery would buy her more time, maybe even a slim chance at cure. Pancreatic cancer is not a friendly kind of cancer, if there even is such a thing. It comes with all sorts of pain, all sorts of digestive and endocrine issues, and very little chance of survival. My mom underwent a round of chemotherapy and radiation to shrink her tumor away from vital blood vessels in order to prepare her for surgery; the chemicals pumped into her body did not work and surgery, according to two of the leading cancer centers in this country, is too dangerous to perform.

She started her second round of "life-prolonging chemotherapy" (probably one of the worst phrases I have ever heard, or uttered) today. After this round, and unless she enrolls in a clinical trial of some sort, there is nothing more that modern, Western medicine can do for her except hold her hand while we wait.

Knowing that my mother will die long before I ever expected her to be gone is a feeling I am still grappling with, and having a difficult time articulating. But like rain falling in the desert, it is a total assault on my senses, on my very sense of being.