(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . My mom has incurable cancer. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-03 I have some news I've been sitting on, which I want to get out there, just so I can address it and move on- as best as anyone can. My mom has incurable cancer. This January, I was blearily trudging through a sleep-deprived morning of campaign work following a night shift in the ER, calling donors and doing paperwork, when my mom called me. I vaguely recalled she'd mentioned scheduling a doctor's appointment for that morning because she'd been feeling fatigued, although I wasn't too concerned about it. She's 72, and when you’ve celebrated as many birthdays are she has- well. In the immortal words of my pathophysiology professor, "'Golden years', my ass!" "Hi, ma," I said as cheerfully as I could, "how're you? How'd your appointment go?" "Before I say anything, Kellen," she said to me evenly, "I want you to know that you are the most important thing to me right now." Now, I love my mother dearly, and I am certain she said that with unmitigated sincerity and care, but a pro-tip to anyone reading this: there are better ways to break this kind of news, particularly to an ER Nurse. Years of experience working in triage caused a cascade of incidental things to suddenly snap into place, my bleariness instantly replaced with a terrified clarity. Beyond the incidental fatigue, a couple of times I’d noticed bruises on my mom's arm that seemed to linger. A wound on her elbow that took longer to heal than I'd expected. She tried to donate blood last year and was told by the blood bank that she'd have to come back later, as she was slightly anemic that day. All minor, incidental things- but prescient. My job is to find and put those pieces together- and I'd completely missed it. I struggled for weeks with that. I'd be lying if I said it still wasn't lingering today. If I had put the pieces together sooner... that's what I'm supposed to do in the ER, put the pieces together so we can get patients to where they need to be. All of this snapped into place in a moment. "Oh, mom..." I said. "How bad is it?" "Well, they're taking me to get chemotherapy right now. They said I can't even go home." This is something I see frequently in the ER. Someone comes in, short of breath, and it turns out they have fluid on their lungs from undiagnosed ovarian cancer that's already metastasized. Someone comes in with abdominal pain to rule out appendicitis, and it turns out they have pancreatic cancer. Etc, etc. Logically, I knew I almost always see the worst of the worst, and so I needed to try and understand this might not be that, I needed to wait and find out what was going on when all the details come back. Emotionally, though, I couldn't think that way. And, of course, I was right. It was that bad. The chemotherapy was tough. My mom has been blessed to be in good health almost all of her 72 years of life; aside from an elective hysterectomy when she was found to have pre-cancerous findings in the late 90's, she's been active, healthy, and illness free. Initially, she shrugged it off. "It's not so bad," she told me. But a lot of people think that initially... only to discover how hard it actually is. To compound that, bills began to arrive with eye-popping totals. $10,270; $5,136; $5,404. Had my mom not had the support of her career as a teacher, through Medicare and VRS, a lifetime of fiscal responsibility, saving, and careful spending would have been upended in the matter of a few treatments. Treatments that, had she not gotten immediately, wouldn’t have kept her from dying within weeks of her initial diagnosis. We were referred to specialists at the University of Virginia's Emily Couric Cancer Center. They sat down and explained what we were facing: the chemotherapy would keep her condition at bay for a while- but it would never cure it. And it would slowly get less and less effective. How slowly? Well, that’s an open question. Maybe five years; maybe five months. There wasn't a good way to know. Some of the mutations found on her bone marrow biopsy were very concerning; the rest was up to her body. There is only one hope- a stem cell transplant. But even this is not a sure thing. She is almost at the age where she wouldn't even be a candidate for one, because the transplant itself only had a 40% chance of success- an entire month of inpatient admission to the hospital, where her entire immune system would be eradicated. At that point, any virus or infection could easily kill her- meaning that as an ER Nurse, there is no way I'll be able to visit her, to stay with her in the hospital, to be with her. Through glass, over Zoom, but not in person without risking her dying. And I understood perfectly well what that month of hospital admission entailed; what she would have to go through. She would have to leave her life in Roanoke and move to Charlottesville, because the University of Virginia required transplant patients to be in close enough proximity to have daily visits. And not to mention that, but the weeks and months following her discharge from the hospital, she'd need full-time care; someone to drive her to the hospital, someone to shop for her. That's scheduled for late July. But she's got to get one more bone marrow biopsy before then to make sure she's even eligible for that. And even if everything goes perfectly… it might not work. Leaving us right back where we started. I struggled with writing this. It's more personal and raw than almost anything I've ever written before. But I'll be honest here. I'm running to be one of a hundred people in the House of Delegates. Thousands of people have donated to and volunteered for our campaign, including a lot from here on DailyKos. Eighty-five thousand people expect me to do my damnedest to stand up for them, to help make decisions that will intimately affect all of their lives, to manage eighty billion dollars of their money. I'm asking them to trust me with a hell of a lot. I owe them a level of truth and openness commensurate with that. I will be off the campaign trail here for a couple days here as we get ready to move my mom to Charlottesville. I want to truly thank the clinicians and professionals at Carilion Blue Ridge Cancer Center, and the University of Virginia Emily Couric Cancer Center. Their skill, care, and consideration through this process has been exemplary. I understand my mom has the odds weighted against her, but I have sincere comfort knowing these are the folks fighting to make them as good as they can be. I will have more to say on this, sometime in the near future. Because what my mom is going through is what millions of American families have to deal with every single year. But I just need a little time to process it myself; to make sure I'm doing everything I can for my mom. I don't have any brothers or sisters; my parents are divorced. She doesn't have anyone else. But she carried me for years. Now it's my turn to do the same thing. 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