{ Motherless Daughters } uniting those experiencing motherloss

Our Stories

Julie's Story

I would like to start out by saying, I am honored to write about my mother. She was an amazing, beautiful person on earth. Her kindness, generosity, compassion and love was deep, unyielding and genuine. Everyone who met my mom or knew her, LOVED her. She didn't have one mean bone in her body. I am eternally grateful that I was her daughter for 36 years.

It all started around 11 years ago with a car accident. My mom had been driving her father somewhere. The brakes on the car failed. They were riding through a toll booth and couldn't stop. Fortunately, they weren't going fast. The car banged into another car in front of them. Although there were some minor injuries (mostly bruises), everyone got through ok.

A few weeks after the car accident, my mother was checking herself out (naked) in a full length mirror. She was looking at her bruise from the seatbelt. It ran diagnolly across her chest. When she lifted her arms, she noticed that her right breast had a medium size patch of dimpling. When she felt it, it was hard.

At first, she didn't tell anyone. But after another two weeks or so, the dimpling never went away. I remember her asking me to take a look at her breast. She wanted my opinion if it looked normal or not. When I first saw it, I told her to see her Doctor ASAP.

Well, to make a very, very, long, drawn out, heartwrenching story short, it turned out to be breast cancer. Fortunately, she had the type of cancer that was very slow moving. She had radiation, chemotherapy and a partial lumpectomy. She was one of the lucky breast cancer survivors. She survived it for 8 long years. There had been some scares at times. But she was always going to her oncologist for check-ups.

Finally, in June of 2002, her oncologist gave her great news. He told her she was completely free of cancer! Imagine that! She was so happy and relived! She had been taking all sorts of herbal remedy's, shark tale potions, cat's claw..etc etc to make sure she would ward off cancer for good.

In July of 2002, my mom woke up with a sore throat. She would get hoarse, then be fine, then lose her voice, then be fine. She decided that she would go see her oncologist (to be on the safe side) and let him check her out. Remember, he just gave her a clean bill of health the month before.

When he checked here out, he felt a small nodule. So he set her up for an MRI. A few days before the scheduled MRI, my mom passed out in the middle of the night. My dad called 911, and she was rushed to the hospital.

The nodule (which turned out to be cancer) happened to be on her vocal chord. It ended up paralyzing her vocal chords. When your vocal chords are paralyzed , they block your airway. She ended up having an emergency tracheotomy. She picked up an infectious disease at the hospital called MYSRA. It happens to one of those super super pnemonia bugs that are resistant to antibiotics.

I will not go into all of the gory, sad, details. But five months after having her "sore throat", my mom died peacefully at the hospital. Her body just wasn't strong enough to fight off MYSRa's. Unfortunately, my mom was NOT (never) free from cancer. It had been quietly spreading throughout her body. She ended up having cancer in her bones, her kidneys, liver.....shall I continue?

My family will no longer agonize over why didn't this oncologist know, or why didn't he pick up on anything, etc, etc, etc. None of this matters- she isn't here anymore. We can only be thankful (from what we know now) that SHE didn't know what was brewing in her body. She did not have any PAIN or worries. WE got to say goodbye to her. SHE knew how much we loved (still do) her.

The best gift we were able to get out of this was to see her in her casket. She was dressed in her favorite clothes. She no longer had the trache in her throat. Her face was just sooooooooo...BEAUTIFUL, YOUNG, ANGELIC! She looked to be about 50 years old or so. She was 64 when she died. But most of all, she looked at peace.

Š Julie

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