Entropy

n. Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.

My mom sees worms.

Carpet fuzz, milk bubbles, lights reflecting on a sealed bottle of water: it doesn't matter. They infest the ground beneath her feet and the drinks she prepares to consume, regardless of the refutation we provide, the solid evidence we explain. This one piece is lint, yes, but the rest on the floor are still worms. These aren't the only things. Windmills appear in the backyard, glimpsed briefly; almond slivers in her Rocky Road ice cream are slips of plastic; other dark spots on the carpet or blankets are bugs or spiders.

The preposterousness of these claims being asked--would you ask if there was a windmill in your own backyard if there was no reasonable basis for one having appeared there in the first place?--is only surpassed by the fact that she believes them, at least the worms. At this moment there is a tall glass of milk in the refrigerator that she will not drink because of the worms in it.

Fourteen months ago, my mother was well enough to drive half an hour to the rural horse camp I worked at to give me something I'd left at home (a wristwatch, which I said I could do without until the next morning, but she came that evening to give it to me anyway).

Eleven months ago, I left for my sophomore year of college. She had been suffering severe back and some joint pain, diagnosed by our family doctor as rheumatoid arthritis.

Eight months ago, I came back for Christmas break to find her walking slowly with a cane, lower legs grossly swollen with lymphodema, long hair (which she'd grown out ever since her chemo treatments were over years ago) mussed and frail. She was exhausted and heavily dosed on morphine for her pain. The cancer was back, this time in her bones; hip, spine, and numerous other small sites. This is called metastasis in medical terms and is the last thing you want cancer to do: move. Bone cancer cannot be treated with chemotherapy as effectively as soft-tissue cancer can. Dad told me on the trip home that this was Stage 4 cancer. Christmas was quiet. She could barely stay awake through the present-opening, regarding most of her gifts with small weary smiled beneath half-lidded eyes.

Two and a half months ago I came home for the summer. "Sorry I didn't send you any care packages this year," she told me one afternoon when I mentioned cookies off-handedly. "I just haven't been feeling up for it. Maybe next year."
"Maybe," I agreed. Her legs were still extremely swollen, a condition that supposedly would ease the less she walked on them, but being the stubbornly independent woman she is, she tried to do as much as she could on her own unless we intercepted her and tried to guess what she wanted.

A little less than two months ago, I woke up at four in the morning--having gone to bed a few short hours before--to hear agonized screams from the family room. I immediately ran out to find her flat on the floor with my dad by her side. "My leg is broken," she groaned. We surmised later that stress fractures in her femur from the bone cancer, combined with a small pivoting motion she had used as she got up from her recliner, caused the bone to snap in two. The paramedics arrived within fifteen minutes. I waited outside with my brother while they set the leg for transport. "This is going to hurt like hell, so I want you to just scream and let loose as much as you need to," the EMT told her.
"I don't want to scare the kids," she replied.

A week later she was back home and walking minimally with a walker.

She now alternates between using a walker for very short distances (from the bed to the bathroom) and a wheelchair for longer ones (from the bedroom to the kitchen/family room area). The rest of the time she watches TV and dozes, interrupted by her med schedule and meals. When she comes out to the family room, she checks her email and visits with us. For a while after she broke her leg, she seemed more alert than she had all summer; I could hold conversations with her, ask her about recipes, ask her about the past.

But the meds--or something else undetermined--are stealing her away again. She can't go back to chemo until she's healed enough from the break. Her warfarin medication (to prevent clotting) occasionally becomes too high a level in her bloodstream, making her bleed constantly from her lips and a few sores on her legs. Words and thoughts hover just beyond her lips sometimes, making us wait for whatever she wants. We do what we can to make her comfortable, but there is only so much you can do. Medicate on time, keep her tea warm, make her sandwiches to whatever exact specifications she requires.

And still there are worms in her bottled water and on the carpet by the bed. These are a new development. We are waiting until Monday for the doctor to tell us whatever the results of her MRI were.

It has gotten to the point that I don't want to know anymore. He could call on Monday and tell us she has ___ amount of time to live. He could say it's just the morphine and other things messing with her brain. I don't even know. It's easier not to know; to just exist day-to-day, to make bread and play piano and sew things and make her sandwiches. To just let things keep spinning on.

I know you are supposed to give this stuff up to God. It's not like any of this is in my hands anyway. But I still don't understand why. Why are my friends' mothers healthy and active and doing everything my mother should be, but isn't? Why am I the one cooking dinners and washing dishes and correcting my brother's math homework? Why am I the one taking pictures of him at the fair? Why am I putting my own worries about my career, my degrees, my schoolwork on hold so I can help hold my family together? My dad puts on a smiling face, but he is fraying at the edges.

I desperately want this to be a miracle story. To be something where God pulls us back from the brink of destruction and sets us back on our feet and back into the normal family we used to be. But I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is a reason why miracles are called that, and it's because they're rare. If everything continues on in its logical progression, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is only mortality. Numbers. God has gone somewhere that I can't see, and to be honest it's hard to find faith at a time like this. If this is all really according to His plan, why does it all feel so terrible? Is this to make up for everything wonderful that has ever happened in my life? Why make her suffer so much?

In less than a month, I return to school. I don't want this to be the last coherent summer I have with my mom. I just want her to be my mom again.

If you read this, pray. Pray hard, because we need as much hope as we can get.