A silver lining sometimes isn't enough

I don't remember where I left off with the story of my mother's latest cancer diagnosis and treatment. Frankly, I can't be bothered to dig through my archives to figure that out.

Long story short: Fourteen of the fifteen brain tumors have sufficiently shrunk to begin chemo. Unfortunately, that's not good enough.

There was another treatment that could be done to shrink that one last tumor. Initially, my mother refused to have that particular (last-ditch) treatment due to its name, which admittedly is kind of intimidating, especially to someone without much of an education.

She was coming up with any and every excuse she could to avoid having to go for the treatment. There wouldn't be anyone there on treatment days to make sure my 5 and 12 year old siblings would get to and from school. She couldn't take any more time off work without risking losing her job. So on and so forth.

Finally she changed her mind, at the last minute.

When she got to the appointment, she was told they couldn't continue with the treatment because the tumor was too big, and too close to her brain stem. The treatment would cause the tumor to swell, possibly severing her spinal chord.

That's it. No more treatments. No more false hope. No more wrong prognoses. Now we just wait.

It's over.