My Mom Was Fine—Until She Wasn’t

My mom was 59 years old when she was diagnosed. She was healthy and full of life, until suddenly, she wasn’t.

We were always together—going out to dinner with friends, swimming, and making the most of summer. Then, one day, she started feeling nauseous and throwing up. I had just gotten over the stomach flu, so I thought maybe I had passed it to her. But when she was still sick four days later, I told her she needed to see a doctor. That same day, she started having back pain. She thought she had pulled a muscle from vomiting.

The next day, she saw her doctor. He thought she had an ulcer—she was going through a stressful divorce at the time—so he gave her medicine for the nausea. But just to be sure, he sent her for blood tests.

Two days later, she got a call saying she needed to go to the hospital right away. Her lab results were off, and the doctors thought she had pancreatitis. Not long after, she called me, crying—the doctors told her she probably had cancer and would be admitted immediately.

After that, everything moved so fast.

A week later, she was in a wheelchair, unable to walk because the tumor on her spine was pressing on her nerves. Two weeks later, she had a stroke. While we were still in the hospital for that, we got her PET scan results. The cancer was everywhere—her stomach was full of tumors. The only organs untouched were her kidneys.

The lesions on her brain started to cause confusion. She had scary hallucinations. A week before she became unresponsive, she would whisper to me that a man in all black was always standing behind me. She would beg me to stay quiet so we wouldn’t upset him.

Then, she couldn’t respond at all.

Hospice came once a day, but my brother, my mom’s friend, and I took turns taking care of her until she took her last breath.

She went from a healthy, 150-pound woman to skin and bones in a matter of weeks.

From the day she was diagnosed to the day she passed, it was only 75 days.

It still chills me to my core. My mom was fine—then suddenly, she was gone. It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through. But I know it was 100 times worse for her.

Now, just over a year later, I still don’t know how to move past the grief.

This was my beautiful mom, just six months before her diagnosis.