i didn't want to put this up with the other entry. when i got home today, my mom told me that the doctor had called to tell her the results of all the tests she's been going through. she's been in intense pain for months now, and it turns out that she has acute arthritis in her neck, with some disks involved, and also a narrowing of the spinal canal. the worst of it though is that my mom has to see a neurosurgeon, because her MRI shows "a cyst or lesion" in her left frontal lobe. none of us are exactly sure what this means. i'm afraid of what it could mean. this is my mom , y'know? i'm not prepared to deal with this.

no one has said cancer. they're sending her to a neurosurgeon, not an oncologist. but still. i lost my grandmother from a brain tumor in january, and my father's father two years before that, also from a brain tumor. watching someone slipping away from you every day little by little is the worst kind of torture there is. i couldn't bear to see my mother disappear from me like that. i can't imagine a world in which my mother is not living. i don't want to be in that world.

for now there's waiting. waiting for appointments, for tests, for results of tests. i want to take all this pain away from my mom. i want it to be me. i don't know how i'm going to get through this, except that i have to.

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