“Stop worrying about the future, you can always change it. All you have
to do is avoid painting yourself into a corner. And if you do, make sure
there’s a window behind you.” Pat Loehmer
Flashback
We were
driving through Canada on a camping trip, Mom, Dad, Pat, and I. I must have been
twelve years old (it felt like I was so much younger at the time). We had
stopped at a wayside, and I kind of wandered off somewhere. (By the way, the picture above was from seven years prior to the trip to Canada.)
When I came
out of the woods from where I had been roaming, our pickup truck and camper were
no longer parked where I thought it had been. I looked around and saw it
driving off.
All I could do was run after it. Here
I was in a foreign country (ok, it was only Canada), and my family was leaving
me behind!
When my parents had been ready to
leave the wayside, they saw Pat go into the back of the pickup camper, and
since we were practically inseparable, they figured I was already in. Pat, at
first, figured that I was in the cab of the truck, but it didn’t take her long
to realize that I was not. She looked through the camper window and into the
truck, saw Mom, Dad, and the dog, and not me. She started beating on the
window, but, with the truck window in between, Mom and Dad were oblivious to
her panicked attempts to get their attention.
At that moment, Pat made a crucial
decision, possibly a life-altering decision in my regards. When my parents
first bought the camper when I was five and my sister was seven, they told us
we were never, ever, for any reason to go near the back door of the camper when
the truck was moving. Mom was a bit of a worry-wart and she pictured one of her
youngest two daughters falling out the back door and into rushing traffic.
Pat didn’t hesitate. She flung the
back door of the camper open just as Dad was breaking for the stop sign before
turning onto the road. I had gotten to within five or six feet of the truck by
then, so easily leapt into the camper before Dad started to accelerate.
Before I could catch my breath, Pat
started laughing hysterically. Within a minute I was laughing right along with
her.
1993 – A visit with the doctor
Two weeks after Pat’s emergency hysterectomy,
Dr. Skye called me into her office. She offered me a chair. “I just got off the
phone with your sister. She asked me to talk to you.”
My mind swirled. What could there be
to talk about?
“I got the final pathology report
back from her fibroid tumor. As you know, fibroids are always benign. Turns out
this wasn’t a fibroid.”
“It wasn’t?” I had a sinking feeling
I knew where this was going.
“Pat has leiomyosarcoma, a very
deadly form of cancer.”
Cancer? In my incredibly healthy, bubbly sister? She is too young, only 34
years old. She has so much to give. But she is also stubborn; she can fight
this and win.
Okay, except that’s not what I really
thought when her gynecologist gave me that diagnosis. Instead, I thought, Lie – O – My – O – sarcoma? Are you kidding
me? You made that up. That sounds ridiculous.
The leio part means smooth and the myo
part means muscle. And I think most people know that sarcoma is the cancer
part. Other types of cancers are carcinoma, lymphoma and melanoma, thus oma means tumor. A leiomyosacrcoma is a
cancerous tumor of the smooth muscles and is most commonly found in the uterus,
stomach or small intestine. It is a rare and unpredictable cancer.
I didn’t know any of that as I sat in
Pat’s doctor’s office that day. All I knew was that Pat would fight this and
win.
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