And yet here I am...Part Two

The first major change in my life came in August 2002. My sister, Janet, was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma. It is a very rare cancer occurring in about 1 in 4 million people. The day my sister's doctor told us she had cancer might as well be yesterday. I will never forget the room, the doctor's face, the words that came out of his mouth, and the crying and screaming my mother did. She yelled over and over, "I knew it. I just knew it." My sister was thirty-six and had five children ranging in age from two to seventeen. I stayed with my sister that first night after her surgery. My mother wanted to stay but I felt she needed the rest and the kids needed to hear it from my parents. Janet slept most of the night but constantly moaned. She woke at some point in the night and she did not remember anything the doctor had told her after surgery. I had to tell my sister she had cancer and that she had lost half of her bladder during the surgery. Her next question stopped me dead in my tracks. "Am I going to die?" I gently told her no and she drifted back off into fitful sleep.

The next fourteen months seemed like a nightmare. She began treatment with chemo and radiation. Just three short months after learning she had cancer we were told it had metastasized to her lungs and liver. I had already begun working with my local Relay For Life and had immersed myself in the American Cancer Society's website. I knew what it meant when the cancer showed up in her lungs and liver. We didn't have much time left. She began chemo in the hospital. One week in and three weeks out. I was fortunate to spend two nights each time with her in the hospital. We became close and I saw a side of my sister that I had never seen until the cancer. I have to continually ask myself why it took a terminal illness to see what an amazing sister I had.

On September 29, 2003, my mom and I followed the ambulance to Nashville. Janet was in tremendous pain and we had to get her to the hospital fast. Janet never left the hospital again. She had good hours but mostly bad. Because I worked as a pharmacy technician for five years, I knew the different medications Janet was taking and when she needed them. I could tell by how she grunted that she needed X. I knew the dosage schedules. I never left my sister's side except once and that was to travel to Lewisburg and bring her three oldest children to see her.

On October 7, Janet's PA came in and began talking with Melanie, my oldest sister, and me. Janet had not talked to us in two or three days and we knew the time was getting close. As Dana sat there in Janet's room and listened to Melanie and me tell funny stories, she saw my sister take her last breath. Death had come and taken my sister. While she was in the hospital, I had promised my sister I would take care of her children. Just a week or two after she died her oldest three children came to live with my family. Five kids. I still to this day don't know how my sister was able to do it. My sister's three oldest children had considerable baggage....the loss of their mother so young, a new home with extremely different rules, and on and on.

We tried hard to be a family for eight months. Eight hard months. If I had to do it over again, I would. Pain and all. They deserved a chance. They deserved someone in their corner and I was that person until it became clear that I could not help them. I have done many things in my life but standing before a judge and telling him that you can no longer care for your dead sister's children is probably one of the worst. I had failed. Plain and simple. F.A.I.L.E.D. Most tell me that I didn't fail but that I did all I could do for them. It is eight years later and I am still not convinced of that argument. If I had taken them to one more counselor, stood it for one more month, anything but I didn't. I stood before the judge and gave away my rights to help raise those three children.

To this day, I cannot watch Extreme Home Makeover without crying when the storyline leads to a couple who took in their family members and changed their lives. Is it wrong to question why it worked for them but not for my family? While I am questioning, is it wrong to ask why my sister was taken at all? Unfortunately I cannot answer either of those questions. If I could, I wouldn't have the hole in my heart that will remain empty for the rest of my life.

The last six months of 2004 were relatively quiet but still had me pondering the what ifs. I suppose we all do that but I am an MVP when it comes to the what ifs. In February 2005, I woke with pain in my left eye. It was the same eye that in 1996 had a detached retina. Fearing another detachment, we went to my doctor in Memphis THAT Saturday. He said I did not have a detached retina but I did have some thinning of the white layer of my left eye. He could not explain it. We went home without answers. The pain intensified in my eye and then other parts of my body began to hurt. A pain I can't even describe. I would go to work and hurt all day and try my best not to cry. When it was time to go home, the only thing I could do was stay on the couch. I cried in pain many, many nights. Someone, I don't remember who, suggested I see a rheumatologist. I did and so starts the next chapter in my life....part three to come.