The First Week

When we were in Italy mom decided to cut her hairs to start getting use to it.
There was a big difference between the long, voluminous, curly hairs she had before and the short, masculine cut she had after, she wasn't happy about it, but her consolation was that they would grow back.
My dad lost most of his hairs so he always makes fun of it saying that her hairs would grow back and his wouldn't.
The first week went as expected..
I ironed my first t-short, which wasn't hard as I thought, and I almost ruined my favorite pants.
It was weird, in such a short period of time, the hierarchy in our family suffered a drastic reversal , from day to day, me and my brother, weren't anymore the "costumers".
We were the ones making sandwiches for mom, moving stuff around for mom, making beds, cleaning the house etc...
The only thing we weren't doing was making dinner, since we all wanted to avoid a food poisoning, dad was the one cooking.
The first week has been really stressful, with the alarm clock at 6:00 to go to school, homework and all of this going on, we all ended up going to sleep at 9:00 P.M.
About mom...well she threw up most of the day, she wasn't eating and drinking and, at the end, dad started getting angry about of it.
Social life? pfff, forget about it.

Back home

In august 12, after a 14 hrs travel, we all are back to our home in Ohio.
After recovering from the time zone, the first bell rang, school was started already and mom was alone at home so I was concern about her most of the time.
The weekend before school started our parents told me and my brother what was going to happen from now to December...
Mom was going to have chemotherapy once a month, since she was going to be weak and she wasn't going to be able to do things, we all had to contribute doing something.
I need to be sincere with you (reader), I never ironed a t-short or pant, I never made laundry and I never cooked in my entire life, not that I didn't want to, but ,since my mom never worked, she had all the time to do those things.
This is why this period is going to be also very instructive...
After one week of school mom was visited by a doctor to see if everything was okay to start the therapy;
Everything was good but ,anyways, the doctor decided that chemo once a week was going to be more effective on preventing the recreation of the tumor.
She was down already because she was going through all this again, then  the doctor decision completely demolished her.
The 30 August she had her first cycle, it took seven hours to get through it, at the end she was tired, her face was white and her expression was lifeless, also if, most of the time, she kept a forced smile on her face.
She was trying to demonstrate that she was strong and she was going to make it, but listening to her crying from the closed door was more painful to us than it was for her.

After The Operation..

After the operation my mom was weak..
She was taking a lot of medicines and painkillers because the scar on her stomach was really long and painful so most of the time she was tired and sleepy.
Five days after the operation the 35 stitches were removed and she left the hospital.
Was very hard for her to move, so she spent most of the time in her bed trying to limit movements, trying to recover and get ready for what was coming next..
During this period of time my dad had to do everything; he was going to work at 8a.m., at lunch he was back home to give mom something to eat and at 2 p.m he was back in his office.
After work, between 5 and 6 p.m, he was back home to take care of mom; He had to do laundry, make beds, clean the house and cook so he had no time to relax and rest.
Me and my brother were in Italy so we weren't able to help him, we were having fun while my dad was giving everything to help mom...
When they came to Italy to get us every looked fine, my parents were hiding everything to my grandparents and so did I; Anyone in our family, beside her sister, know anything.
I made this blog because I'm sure that nobody in my family would be able to read it.
I would like you to check out the page "Your Stories" in the right column, the purpose of it, as you can image, is to share your stories, your experiences, advices and whatever you feel to write.
It's an experiment, I don't even know if that would work, so ,if it doesn't and you have a solution, please leave a comment in the space below.

So, in this post I will be give you a little background so you will understand the facts better...
In October 2001, when I was 4, my mom discovered that she had breast cancer, well.. actually two of them on the same breast...I don't remember much of that time, just the fact that for a little while we lived with our grandma, who died a couple years ago from a tumor of her own.
Mom had 6 cycles of chemotherapy and 6 cycles of radiotherapy at the same time once a month for 6 months.
She had a quadrantectomy too... in case you don't know what that is here is the definition:
Quadrantectomy is a surgical procedure in which a "quadrant" (approximately one-fourth) of the breast, including tissue surrounding a cancerous tumor, is removed. It is also called a partial or segmental mastectomy.
After that she had physical therapy to regain the mobility of the left arm.
everything was fine until this summer ( in 2013 ).
I don't really know how all this started...
One day my dad told me that mom had a mass on her uterus and she was going to be operate on.
In June 13 we left for vacations;
My parents accompanied me and my twin to my ( my dad side ) Grandma's house and left us there as he does every summer.
A month later, mom had already been operated on and during a phone call my dad finally told us the truth!
During the operation the surgeon found a tumor as big as an orange attached to the ovary so he made the decision of take EVERYTHING out.
The operation was successful but is not over yet...