Cancer

While I was visiting my inlaws over the summer and knitting one day my mother in law mentioned that she used to wear shrugs. I can't remember now how shrugs came up, I was knitting a washcloth or something else that is mind numbingly easy. They were just perfect for keeping your shoulders warm and that she'd enjoy having one again. We returned home and I found the perfect washable wool (at 82 years old, with neuropathy I didn't think she'd appreciate something that needed a lot of special care when washing) and I cast on. I got the thing knitted, but didn't send it off. I thought about it, but where she lived the temeratures were still about the same as the surface of the sun, and while they air condition their house I wasn't in a hurry to get it sent off. Every now and again I'd tell my husband that we should send it off or it would be her Christmas present (or her birthday present in January). A little voice had told me to hold off sending it for now, I'm sure of it.

A few weeks ago my mother in law was into the doctor for an MRI (or CAT scan I don't remember which) and a spot was found on her lung. Yesterday she called me and left a message that she had bad news please call her back, I thought that my elderly father in law had passed, I called her back. She broke down as I was talking to her so badly that when my husband called her a little later she couldn't talk to him. 8 years ago? it must be 10 years ago now or more because she had breast cancer before cancer took my dad (which was 8 years and 11 months ago). She had a mastectomy. Several years later (still several years ago) a small pocket of cancerous cells were found at the mastectomy site and they were removed, she was declared cancer free and I believe that she was given that Tamoxofin or whatever the medication is. She and her doctor were comfortable with foregoing the chemo (which I agree with even back then I don't think that she could have survived the chemo). The cancer is back, now it is in her lungs. She's so scared. I wish I could have crawled through the phone line to hold her while she cried. I wish that she could have talked to Chris, it was the most horrible thing I have had to tell Chris.

I packaged up that shrug and a jar of chokecherry jelly that I made from the chokecherries that my youngest two children and I picked and sent them off to her. And a prayer that whatever will be will be and that we will be able to accept what God has decided with grace.