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LeAnn
I just found your webpage. May I just say God bless you all!
LeAnn is my mother of 30 years now. I watch people every day fighting,
or being diagnosed with a form of cancer. I never in a million years
dreamed my mother would become ill. There is no breast cancer in the
family, although my maternal Grand mother did suffer from lymphoma,
and I am very much interested to see if there is a link there.
These testimonies, although they give me reassurance that mother may be
around for a few more years, make me so sad to think of what she has
in store for her. I see it, like I said, almost everyday, and I know
what people have to go through. I just wish it wasn't she who has to
suffer.
My mother has a strong faith, and I have recently had some heart to
heart talks with God. What do you know, maybe this is why I stumbled
onto your website. In the meantime I will continue to pray for my
mother and for everyone who continues to fight this, and I would ask
the same for anyone who reads this.
I am just scared. Your whole life your mother always makes things
better for you. I just wish I could do that for her now.
Update
Hello again. I need to send an update as things have changed. When I last wrote my mother LeAnn had just been diagnosed with IBC. Like most, it was already stage 4, with mets to the liver, hip, spine, mediastinum and of course countless lymph nodes.
Mother started intense chemo which made her very, very ill. Her birthday was the following month, April 30th. We celebrated her life as she held strong. Around July 4th 2004, she was given a clean bill of health!
We all know miracles happen and that prayers do get answered. Her oncologist called her the poster child for chemo. We had quite a celebration that 4th with family and friends all around.
Then in December the nose bleeds and back pain started. On the 17th of December my father and I pleaded with our beautiful mother in her oncologist's office to please try chemo again. It had come back with a venegence.
If it had sounded mean before, it packed everything this time. The mets were abound, and the liver was now 70% compromised. Mother's initial tumor was 20 centimeters, and their hope was to shrink it enough to operate.
It had responded so well to the chemo that her oncologist did not think that a mastectomy was necessary. She did have radiation following chemo as well. Mother finally agreed that day to start chemo again as people in the halls were exchanging Merry Christmas cheers to each other.
We brought her home that day after her treatment, and as I was on my way to my home my father called and told me they were on their way to the hospital. Her oncologist had called and after reviewing her blood work determined that she was in renal failure.
My mother never did come home. We spent Christmas with her in the hospital and on New Years Day 2005 she passed with our family around her. We all individually said a prayer. She looked at us one last time, and she was gone.
I can not tell you the void in my life. I am now 33, and I have a daughter who is 6 and a son who is 8. I am so scared that I might some day leave them the way my mother left me. My mother and father had just celebrated their 37th wedding anniversary that same December.
I also have one brother and he has 4 children. My mother loved her grandchildren, children and husband intensely. She had been vice president at a local bank and was very involved in her community. Her passing touched many lives.
Thank you for having this site as it was an inspiration for me, and it also made me aware of the devastation of this disease. God bless all the survivors, caregivers and families that land on this site reaching for hope and praying for a miracle.
God bless the pathfinders that shine down lighting the day for those of us that are left behind struggling to understand.
Thank you.
Amy
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