The wind beneath our wings

My Mother was a wonderful women and she was beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside. One day she started feeling ill and what she was feeling came on very sudden. She vomited numerous times and she had such severe headaches that she had to put her head down constantly. As her daughter I started realizing that she was not herself, and she started doing things that didn’t make sense. Asking her questions and having her answer was a huge struggle and we didn’t understand why. When she put a pot of water on the stove one day she put the flame on a different spot from where the pot was, and she didn’t understand why. My dad and brother and I started suspecting there was something wrong with her.

I called her sister and she said to take her to Emergency room right away that something seriously is wrong. Mind you before this all happened she was told she had a sinus infection. After various tests and such our family was told that she had something called Glioblastoma; a stage four brain cancer. We didn’t know anything about the brain tumor that was taking over her brain, only later we found out that is was extremely lethal. She ended up having brain surgery so the doctors can take the tumor out.

After rounds of radiation, and chemotherapy she tried maintaining a normal life. She didn’t drive and she relied basically on family and friends for support physically and mentally. After surgery she had started feeling better but then the tumor had started growing back and it had started swelling again like it had done once before. This is when everything went down hill and my mother slept all day and she constantly had no energy. Months had gone by and she also had done rehab, which took a lot of time for her to recover after her surgery, and towards the end she couldn’t function normally. My mother was diagnosed that year in May and died of this lethal brain tumor 6 months later in hospess. Before she had passed she couldn’t speak and couldn’t move. She was wheeled around and she was on morphine for all her pain.

She passed away that October, and when she passed she wasn’t her. She was someone I didn’t know and I couldn connect with. She withered away day after day. When she passed not only did we gain a tragic experience but we also gained an angel. The Wind beneath our wings is engraved on her head stone, and forever we will remember the good and not the bad. I myself as well as the rest of my family have learned and grown from this terrible experience. We all grew stronger and continue to live on for my mother; she would be proud of all of us.

---

Opinions expressed within this story belong solely to the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of the National Brain Tumor Society.