The options.

I can tell you the facts and I can share the feelings until I have nothing left to say, but you will not understand. I don't hold that against you. Your mind will process something that isn't a matter of the mind. For your sake, I hope you never understand. 

My relationship with my mother was important to me and I always cherished it. We spent time together and enjoyed each other. We disagreed, respectfully, on many things and didn't always understand each other but we had a special bond. She cared for me so deeply as her child and friend. I hope I can understand that love when I have my own. She won't be here to share that joy with me.

I am lonely now. She is present but she is gone. What you see in the photos is a bright smile on a well-poised woman. These are but calculated moments. I tell her I love her often. I hug her. I try my best to care for her in a way that doesn't make her feel that she cannot care for herself. She has the strength of a very old person, and the cognition of a very young child. That's not to say there aren't glimpses of herself, but those are few and far between and nowhere near where she was before her seizure. She may not be able to fully process and communicate her thoughts, but I am certain her heart and mind still understand at some level.

Her MRI a few days ago showed significant tumor growth. It's now spread to both sides of her brain in the frontal lobe. That's the thought processing center. She has a hemorrhage on the side that has the most growth. That means bleeding. 

Surgery in this location and for this tumor is not an option.

I don't think the clinical trial is working, and if it is it's not fast enough. Even if we continue with it, she can barely handle it. 45 pills a day for 7 days. These are not tiny pills and this is a woman who has been adverse to pills all her life. The best way to describe what those pills did to her was zombify her. She had a hard time in the first round, I'm not sure she could make it through the second one even if she wanted to. That doesn't seem like a viable treatment anymore.  

Avastin, plan B IV chemo, is out because of the bleeding.

We have two options left. 

The first is radiation, again. Risky on the frontal lobe with lots of side effects. She did well in her first round a year ago. That was a year ago. Radiation is not a cure. It will HOPEFULLY reduce growth or shrink the tumor. It is a pause button at best. I don't know if you know, but radiation involves being bolted to a table under a simulated mask so that you cannot move. The radiation is then administered to the exact spot of the tumor. My mother never really talked about it in detail, but she said it was unpleasant. She always had a penchant for masking the negative emotions. But on mention of the mask she shuddered. Once after treatment, I saw the mask in the basement and asked her if she was going to keep it. She said vehemently, "No! I don't want that thing in my home." Isn't that all you need to know?

The second is to forego these interventional treatments and let it take it's course, administering whatever meds are needed to control pain.

Time and quality of life are not the same. How do you honor someone's wishes when they cannot tell you what those wishes are? She made it clear when she was healthy, how she did and did not want to live. But that doesn't make our decisions easier or clearer. All we can do is hope that we are making her as happy and comfortable as she can be. That we are honoring her soul. We must do what is best for her, not what feels best for us.

This is fucking hard. This hurts.