With my mom's brain surgery only a few hours away I am finding it increasingly hard to think about anything other than her surgery. So keeping her happy and laughing has been my goal and I have been taking my "job" very serious!
Last night my mom and I spent our night watching Psychic Kids on A&E, which is something my mom and I share...typically we watch in tandem via the phone, we laughed and made fun and giggled like little girls about anything from this "wicked" Boston accent we heard on the TV and to her waking from her surgery and pretending that she some how developed a "wicked" accent during her surgery...hahaha! My Dad thought we were absolutely NUTS... which isn't to far from reality.
Today I took my mom out to lunch and we spent the afternoon eating and browsing the little shops. We laughed and made fun of her tumors to which we were over heard by the salesladies at one of the shops who were SHOCKED at our humor to point where they didn't believe that she was going to actually be having brain surgery in the next 24 hours!
I am so thankful that my family has this amazing ability to NOT take things too seriously... We love to laugh and poke at ourselves and each other. I'm so glad that laughing could lift the seriousness of the day to come and make us all more comfortable with coping the surgery.
I wanted to document my mom the day before her surgery and capture her smile and laughter in images that we could refer to cheer us up and give us strength...
For those who maybe reading this who don't know about my Mom's condition, in January of this year she was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis. It is a genetic disease... My Mom was diagnosed with NF2 which is tumors of the central nervous system, the tumors are not cancerous but can be very debilitating.
Everything was discover very casually really... she went to her ENT Dr. Berger for a sinus infection that would not go away and happened to mention that she had hearing loss in her left ear. He was shocked and ordered an MRI and once she brought the films back he discovered the tumors... 3 of them that he could see and refer her immediately to her doctors at Jefferson and University of Pennsylvania. And that was were we found out all about the Neurofibromatosis prior to that we had no idea the condition existed.
My Mom's surgery is set for the morning and will be preformed by Dr. Bigelow and Dr. Judy at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. We know she'll be well taken care of...
So in conclusion to my post about "laughing it off", I really have found that in life if you can't find the humor in the situation you'll only wind up feeling defeated and no one wants to be defeated...(I think that's a Michael Jackson song.....yes it is, Beat It). So learn to have a sense of humor and it'll make life easier to swallow.
So give a little thought if you wouldn't mind to laughing the next time life hands you lemons...well in our case brain tumors....lol!
My Parents...
Maggie the family dog!
my sister and my mom...
my gran and her daughter...
