The Week Of...

Lots of religious days of importance are happening this week - including the start of Holy Week for Christians coinciding with Jewish Passover celebrations. As my mother died on Easter Sunday, it's been a conflicting time for me for many years.

Twenty-seven years ago this week, my family was everywhere emotionally. We'd received the devastating news a few weeks before that my mom's breast cancer had metastasized to not only her lungs and liver (which she knew about), but also to her brain. In addition to the struggle that comes with knowing someone you love has only a short time left in this physical plain, my dad insisted that my mom not be told about the new diagnosis, and my disagreement with his insistence led to a lot of additional tension.

Hospice was around, as was a day nurse that helped administer medications to mom during the day. Back then, adjuvant treatment included oral dilantin to help eliminate brain swelling. It had to be administered every six or eight hours, if I recall - plus an N-G tube had to be taken care of to make sure liquid nutrients could be given as well, as she was unable to eat. Add the steady stream of family and friends happening by to visit, and it's not hard to get that there was lots of movement in and around the house during Holy Week that year. But the push to aim for normalcy was strong.

I'd moved back home less than a year before from Philadelphia to deal with a career change/transition from photojournalism that involved deciding if graduate school was the direction to take. In between gathering GRE and grad program application information, I was also training for an outside chance at trying for another Olympic team. Yes, things were crazy busy.

Because mom was pretty immobile, changing her bed sheets was done the same way hospitals do it: by rolling her over instead of getting her out of bed. But a new Hospice bed delivery required that we get her up to actually change beds. During the relatively quick exchange, we helped her sit in the big comfy chair in the room, a plush recliner that happened to sit near a dresser. Not two minutes after she got into the chair, she glanced into the mirror and was pretty shocked to see that all of her hair was gone from the radiation she'd received in the hospital when her metastasis was discovered.

"Wow," she said as she rubbed her head. "I'm as bald as a cue ball!"

She didn't ask where her hair had gone or why, but I think she knew.

As the Olympic Trials were around the corner, I had decided to open my outdoor track season with a meet in New Jersey that seemed to be about an hour or so away. My mom was always my biggest cheerleader, traveling the country with me to meets through the years - both during and after college. She was actually more excited about the meet than I was.

The night before the meet was Good Friday. As lots of folks called to see how she was, I remember overhearing my dad telling folks he hadn't seen in years that my mom was acting a bit delirious, describing her as "talking out of her head." That totally shocked me, because I hadn't witnessed anything like that at all. She and I talked all the time, although she talked a lot less than she use to.

I remember giving her a manicure that night. While I painted, she talked a bit about the meet, asking if my uniform was clean and if my car was gassed up and ready to go. She said she wished she could go and watch me compete. While I painted my own nails the same color I told her she'd be with me in spirit, but she was already fast asleep. I took this picture of our hands together a few minutes later.

My event started relatively early so I had to leave on Saturday when it was barely light outside to make it on time. But it ended up being much further away than I'd thought and it seemed like it took forever to get there. The whole while I drove, I kept thinking about how horrible it would be if my mom passed away while I was stuck in my car trying to get to or from a track meet. Those thoughts and the very cold weather made me warm up, take just one jump (winning the event at a pretty low height), get back in my car and drive home as fast as I could.

As soon as I poked my head into the room, she smiled and wanted to know how the meet went.

"How did you do?" she said.

"It didn't go so well," I told her.

"Don't worry - you'll get 'em next time."

Those raspy words were the very last ones she ever said to me.

Around midnight, when I went in to give the dilantin, her breathing was very loud and labored. I knew instantly that I needed to get everyone up and here as soon as possible. I told my dad, then called our pastor. His wife told me he'd be right over.

We - my dad, grandmother, great aunt (grandmother's sister) and the pastor - sang and talked to her for what seemed like both an eternity and only a few minutes. Sometime after 4am, her breathing got even more labored and shallow. I was standing near her left leg and just kept rubbing the tiny spot above her knee. Seconds later, she took her last breath.

My mom passed away from metastatic breast cancer on 4/19/92 at 4:19am.

Folks around the globe were getting up and prepping to get to Sunrise Services to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. I was calling the local funeral home to make arrangements for them to pick her up and prep for her funeral. I've always thought there was a strange irony in that.

This year the 19th is actually Good Friday, and I have been dreading it big time. Of course I remember the day she died, but because Easter Sunday isn't a fixed date on the calendar, the dates don't coincide every year. Memories seem to hit a smidge differently when they actually do, though.

In the years since, I've married, become a mother myself, divorced, been through all sorts of life changes and even married again. This is the first time I've ever written about those last days with her.Thanks for indulging the need to commit these thoughts and memories to virtual paper. I guess it was important for me to do this today and in this way.

May you enjoy your holy day celebrations with your families or with whomever you celebrate. I plan on trying my best to do the same. 

My First Time (it's not what you think!)

While waiting in the chiropractor's office to have him work his magic on my aching back, I thumbed through a health magazine. On the last page was a reader-written essay about the first time something new was attempted for better health. At the end was an invitation for other readers to send in their 400-word "first time" pieces. So I sent in this:

Kiai!: How Donning a Karate Gi Rejuvenated Me
by Felicia Hodges

I’ve always been very physically active. In grade school it was kickball, tag and later, the middle school’s softball team (I played first base). As a freshman in high school, a few moths after watching my uncle in the NYC marathon, I decided to give the track team a try. I ran and jumped my way right into an athletic scholarship, seeing the US and earning a B.A. without any school loans hanging over my head after graduation.

Through career shifts, marriage, pregnancy and divorce, I kept competing. In July 2004, I retired from the sport so I could work on my master’s and still keep up with my then 11-yr-old son. A few days after I started graduate school in August, I found a pea-sized lump in my right breast.

Thanksgiving break was spent recovering from a bilateral mastectomy. In February, after watching my son do kata from the balcony of the dojo while trying to read my school assignments, I decided to take the sensei up on the offer to join the class. Since track had ended, I hadn’t even run to the refrigerator. I missed being active. I missed sweating.

And sweat, we did – thanks to the generous helpings of pushups, jumping jacks and ab work sensei dished out. At least that was familiar – unlike the stances, katas and punching/kicking drills. I felt like the world’s least coordinated person for quite a while (which sensei assured me was totally normal), but it felt really good to hit something. Plus we were encouraged to scream loudly while punching and kicking. Physically yelling while hitting a heavy bag proved to be pretty darn therapeutic - and a whole lot cheaper than psychotherapy.

Three weeks before my last radiation treatment, I entered my first competition, (I wore a hard foam protector to keep the radiated chest from getting hit). That did it: my passion for a new physical activity was ignited.

Next May, I will test for my black belt and close in on my five year “cancerversary”. Through all the physical changes breast cancer brought, karate was the one constant, proving that I may have had cancer, but cancer didn’t really have me because I could do stuff that I’d never even tried before my diagnosis. I’m so glad I donned a gi and decided to line up in the back of that class. Sweating is good for the soul.

Made it - in exactly 400 words...

Pinkwash '08

With all the excitement over the election, I truly forgot to toss some confetti when November 1st - the date that marks the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month - rolled around.

What's so bad about the pink ribbons, you ask? Nothing would be if awareness were truly the goal or if it was all that we needed (in reality, a cure would be nice). Sadly though, the pink that is seemingly everywhere from the end of September through October is sometimes just as much about the money raised for the corporations that design the products than making this cancer go away.

Last year, the product that really made me aware of the "pinkwash" was Campbell's Soup. My local Price Chopper supermarket had a big bin of pink-labeled cans near the front door with a sign inviting shoppers to "Help Find a Cure." Trouble was that no where on the cotton candy-colored labels was there any mention of how much money from the sale of each can was to be donated or where the money was going.

This year, it was the $400 pink Dyson vacuum cleaner I saw in Target that nearly sent me over the edge. I suppose in some marketing genius' mind, pink cleaning products promote consciousness about breast cancer, but I just don't see the connection. Since most women don't think that anything as bad as a breast cancer diagnosis will happen to them, pink ribbons may remind them to get their annual mammogram or do regular breast self-exams, but I doubt the thought washes over us while tidying up around the house.

To me, the real problem is that not everyone is truly aware of the wide swath of devastation this disease can leave in its wake. I lost my mom in '92 to this stupid disease and I still didn't really understand it until my own breasts fell victim 12 years later.

182,460 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in the US this year. That's close to 200,000 women faced with surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy soon after hearing "It's cancer." Almost 41,000 American women will die from it in 2008 as well. That's a whole lot of families, partners, friends and neighbors who now must find a way to get through their daily routines without them. Since breast cancer is one of the most funded cancers, great strides have been made in early detection techniques and treatments in the past 10 years, but still people are dying. Treatments are wonderful – as is helping women find out they have breast cancer while it is still in its earliest, most treatable stages – but where the heck is the cure?

Think about it: if all the pink products that slap an awareness ribbon on their label actually donated a portion of their total proceeds to breast cancer research, this disease probably would have gone the way of the dinosaur by now. But so many of them either cap their contributions, give such a tiny percentage of each sale to the cause or give to organizations that have such high administrative overhead that only a tiny amount actually gets funneled to research and development for finding an actual cure.

Please, before you buy a pink feather duster or toss another container of yogurt or soup with a pink ribbon on it into your shopping cart, read the label to see how much of their donation – if any – will actually benefit women who are battling breast cancer or help ensure that a cure will be found someday soon. Unless it is a product you absolutely need, don't feel obligated to buy just because the label is the color of Pepto Bismol or the words "Breast Cancer" appear on the package. Instead, send a few dollars to local groups you know are helping women and their families (like Miles of Hope Breast Cancer Foundation) - and continue to pray that a cure for this stinking disease will be found before this little lady pictured above grows boobs.