You cannot look away from what you cannot see

As I write this we're on day 28 and surrounded by family. We're in the lobby of the hospital, taking up  way too much room and being inappropriately loud talking about when my mom went to see Andy Williams for her 16th birthday and how growing up in Vegas in the 50s and 60s was awesome because of mobsters and high rollers. It's my mom and 3 of her sisters, and when my mom and her sisters get together they are a force of nature. They're like an inverted hurricane: category five sound and fury and when they've passed through everything is organized and everyone has eaten their veggies.

But we haven't gotten up to today yet. This is the part of the story where we all started experiencing lots of firsts, and stepping forward into the dark and believing there would be light. This is the part where we heard that the average length of survival after diagnosis for glioblastoma multiforme stage IV is 100 days. This is where we checked her into the hospital (by we I mean the neurosurgeon, but we were all hovering), and started asking all the questions except one.

What were the treatment options? We could opt for surgery, which would be dangerous and very invasive since the larger of the two tumors was very close to her center line and had grown from 2.5cm to 3.2cm in the ten days since the biopsy. We could start with only radiation. This treatment was fairly safe and relatively non-invasive and could shrink the tumors; the downside was with the tumors being so aggressive radiation might do nothing but slow their growth. Not stop it. Not reverse it. Just slow it down. The final choice was chemotherapy in conjunction with radiation (did you know you don't treat cancer without both? At least this kind of cancer) and switch back and forth between the two. This would almost definitely stop the growth of the cancer for a time, but this treatment would also make her feel weak, sick, and worst of all, nauseated.

For those of you who know my mother well you know that last word is the vilest profanity. There is nothing in the wide world she hates so much as throwing up, and she would go to any length to avoid it. Four pregnancies of being wiped out ill and vomiting constantly has given her a sort of Pavlovian PTSD. Hers was never morning sickness. It was mourning sickness, and lasted the entire 40 weeks of gestation. When you know what it feels like to have bathed your teeth in stomach acid so often it disintegrated the enamel you can judge my mom on her aversion to nausea. And going through that exquisite torture for something to stop the growth but only maybe reverse it was difficult to contemplate.

Frankly none of the options were good. Surgery could kill her or leave her half paralyzed. Radiation might slow the growth or do nothing at all. Radiation and chemotherapy would stop the growth but might not reverse it, and her tradeoff for that was to hate every waking feeling nauseated moment of her life.

These were the options as they were explained to us briefly on Monday, before her admittance to the hospital, and again on Tuesday once they'd done another MRI and found the tumors had grown roughly 28%. More than a one quarter increase in 10 days. Knowing that, the oncology team told us they needed our treatment decision by the end of Tuesday, roughly 24 hours from when we received the diagnosis. All three doctors recommended surgery as the high risk/ high reward choice.

My parents called a family council. It wasn't hard to convene- I'd flown in from Houston already two days before and my sister had driven down from Wyoming and my brother lives in the same city as the hospital, so calling the council was pretty much my dad just saying, "Let's sit down and talk about this." My parents wanted our thoughts and input. Not only that, but they wanted us to make this decision, make it as a family, make it unanimously, and make it in the next three hours. I wanted three decades to research and study. But we work with what we're given.

So we sat down to talk about it. The plan, as my father laid it out, was for us to each share our feelings on the treatment options and ask any questions we might have. If we didn't know the answer we'd write it down to ask the surgeon. After everybody got their turn to talk we'd each say with treatment we thought we should go with. Then we'd pray about it and see how we felt.

Here came one of the ways in which I diverge from the rest of my family. I forcibly held myself still and mentally pressed my lips closed against the myriad of thoughts, opinions, concerns, and questions crashing through my mind. Not because they wouldn't want to hear from me; on the contrary, they'd listen as long as I wanted to keep flapping my tongue at them. No, I wanted to hear what they had to say without being swayed by any of my thoughts or opinions. And I knew that my silence would force them to speak. Or force my dad to call on them, whichever.

Dad called on Ciera to talk first. She's the oldest child, so I thought that made sense. Ciera has always been careful and thoughtful in her decisions and never embarked on a course of action without a plan in place first. She expressed concerns about the risks inherent in the surgery including the high risk of partial paralysis, but also concerns about the possible ineffectiveness of the radiation and what effect either could have on her future quality of life. It is important to note at this point that my mom couldn't walk well on her own, never wanted to eat, and was seeming weaker by the day. Quality of life was a big concern for us.

While she was talking I had moved around my brother's other side so he was between Ciera and I. Just in case that wasn't enough, when Ciera was done talking I gestured to him and said, "Stephen?"

He hadn't been there when we'd received the diagnosis. The rest of us had experienced two and a half extra hours of knowing before he'd been able to make it to the hospital and hear.  Even so, his words largely focused on one of the two questions we had all been thinking but hadn't said out loud yet.

"How did this happen?" Without actually saying the phrase his thoughts and sentiments circled that theme. And since he didn't say those words no one could say, "Cancer just happens," or "I don't know." But when he'd finished, we were all silent.

We decided to run a few errands and think and pray on our own, and then meet back in an hour or so to discuss. No one had expressed an opinion one way or the other yet- we were bewildered, overwhelmed, and none of us had eaten anything since the day before. We weren't ready yet, so we started to leave.

"Wait, Angie," my dad stopped us. "What do you think?"

I had one chance to say everything I was thinking. I wanted to say the most perfect, succinct, well constructed sentence in the history of language. What I needed to say was something honest. "I'm scared," I said. My mom reached out and I took her hand. "I say surgery. Kill it, kill it with fire."

My mom smiled at me and squeezed my hand, then my two siblings and I left to ponder, to pray, and to talk.

And to eat. We were in Utah, and we all love Cafe Rio, and neither Ciera nor I have one close to where either of us live, so that's where we went to get food. It was so strange; my siblings are awesome people, who are intelligent, fun, creative, and easy to talk to. So the odd part was when we realized this was the first time in our entire lives that the three of us had gone out to lunch together. Honestly I couldn't remember just the three of us doing anything together since before my sister was married nearly two decades ago (I'm rounding up, Ciera, but really not by much). And we had fun. Every moment, every word was heavy with the context of what we were going through, but despite that it was fun to just be together.

We went to Walmart after and bought them anniversary cards for my parents to give to each other. Have I mentioned that Day One, diagnosis day, was also their 38th wedding anniversary? Obviously they hadn't celebrated, but we thought they should. We took turns trying to find cards that were the perfect balance of humorous and heartfelt, and several times I not-so-sneakily went off by myself to cry a little. That's how I do it, a little at a time. Ciera waits until she's alone and then does it once and does it hard. Stephen... I'm not really sure. I'll have to ask him.

We found the cards and since it was still almost Christmas, bought some poinsettias too. Four of them. Then we went back to the hospital to our waiting parents. To our surprise we also met our grandfather, Grandpa Newman, visiting my mother. My father's father, he has been a pillar of strength and a personal inspiration and protector my whole life. I immediately felt a little better.

My dad had already brought my grandpa up to speed and so, after arranging the poinsettias, we prepared to pray. In my opinion, for me, what came next is the most important thing that has happened in this entire journey so far. Some of you may have noticed that whenever I've referred to my mother's children or her pregnancies I've said four, but I've only ever mentioned two siblings. My third sibling, a younger sister, passed away as a baby. Her name was Karissa. She was born with complications and didn't stay long in this world, but I've always felt her lack in our family. I know my mother has too- it's always been painful for her to talk about my little sister, but the weight of that loss has never left her.

We were in a loose circle to pray with my mom in her hospital bed. My brother was on her left, with my sister next to him. Then my grandpa, then me. Then there was a space slightly smaller than two people standing shoulder to shoulder, then my dad on my mom's right side. He said the prayer for us. He plead with Heavenly Father for us to know, as a family, what would be the very best choice to make for my mom. He asked for the Spirit to confirm to us the right choice and to grant us peace. He explained what the options were and what thoughts we had about each one, and asked for guidance. Then he was silent.

A light hand rested on my shoulder, and I could feel Karissa standing in the space next to me just as real and present as my grandpa on the other side. I'm not sure if I felt or heard her whisper in my ear, "I'll protect mom during surgery, I promise." I said her lack in our family has affected me, but my whole life I've also felt close to her, like I knew her. When I was young I had dreams about playing with her in fields of flowers but she was always taller than me. Here in this moment she was a few inches shorter.

She squeezed my shoulder and stepped away from me into the place that completed the circle. She was there with us. Our family was WHOLE. But my dad was still pausing, silent, the prayer incomplete. It had been several minutes and I got worried- was he crying? Did he need help? I stepped around my little sister and rested my head on dad's shoulder. He paused for a few heartbeats more, then expressed gratitude for the Spirit of the Lord and closed the prayer. As we said, "Amen," I felt Karissa pull away and opened my eyes.

My dad spoke first. He said the impression he received was to trust the doctors, and that he was reminded in previous blessings my mom had been given she'd been promised that the Lord would guide the doctors in their tasks and treatments. The doctors recommended surgery, and he felt that was right. Then it was my turn. I could see the tears in my mom's eyes and hear her breath catch as I related what and who I'd felt. Surgery was the right thing. My grandpa passed on his feelings, saying he was only there to support us. My sister said she'd been told to continue to trust in her parents, as she had her whole life. Whatever they thought would be right, would be right. Then my brother shared that he hadn't heard a voice or felt anything specific, except that he could clearly think the word "surgery," but when he tried to think of what the other options were he could not remember them.

Finally my mom's turn came. She said she'd heard the voice of the Lord promising to keep her safe during the surgery, and that angels would be sent to protect her. My little sister was going to be one of them. So was her father, my grandpa who passed away when I was almost ten but whose kind eyes and knock knock jokes will always be a cherished memory.

It was unanimous. It was amazing. And it was a personal, tailored message to each of us that not only was our Father in Heaven listening, but that he was going to take the time to answer each of us individually and in a way we would understand best. For that moment all the fear was gone, replaced with feelings of peace, love and wholeness. We had found the eye of the hurricane.