December was the month that things starting going downhill. Trouble started on December 10 with my father’s 4th chemo treatment. That night he became really weak and got really cold. He was shaking uncontrollably and it took a couple of hours to warm him up and get the shivering to stop. Mom spent the night sleeping on the computer chair in their room. It was a pretty pitiful sight for sure. Dad’s appetite went away and he started losing weight and remained weak throughout the rest of December.
Mom normally has Christmas spirit and loves to decorate the house, making it look festive and beautiful. This year, she just didn’t feel like it. I convinced her to put up some of the decorations so that she would be partially in the spirit, but her heart wasn’t in it. Even our yearly tradition of driving around looking at Christmas lights didn’t have the same feeling to it.
December was also the month we discovered mom had cancer as well. Mom went in for her yearly physical and the doctor noticed a mass when he palpated her liver. He sent her to get a scan and the next day she got a call that it was indeed cancer. I remember that day very clearly that I had gone outside that morning to get the newspaper and when I came back in, mom was hugging dad and said it was going to be ok. I asked what was wrong and she said the doctor called to let her know that she had cancer in her liver. I remember saying “ok” and then going to my room. I just started crying. I don’t know if it was more hearing about my mother’s cancer or seeing my father crying just moment before. Either way, I just knew things were very, very bad. Her mother had liver cancer and I knew there was very little chance of treatment. Not when the doctor was able to feel the mass anyway. Mom came into my room and told me I would be fine. Still always thinking of others first. She is a trooper. That morning we went to the gym and carried on with our day as though nothing was different. I suppose, looking back on it, that was a good thing. There was going to be plenty of time spent in the coming months dealing with cancer.
December 27th brought another disaster. It started with just a backed up toilet. Plunging did nothing so dad put some heavy-duty drain cleaner down the pipe. Still didn’t work, so we got word that we can’t use the restroom until the next day. Well around 3am that morning, Mom heard water running and splashing. While the humans in the house knew not to use the water, the water softener didn’t get the memo and decided to do its back flush. That caused the toilets to overflow and water to back up into the showers. The next morning my brother and I got out the portable snake and tried clearing the clog through the outflow in the side of the house and the pipe access from the roof. That didn’t work either. So we waited for a plumber. They came out, took a look at what we had tried and said it would be $125 bucks and a few minutes. Well that was wishful thinking. They could not get the water flowing with their industrial snake so they put a camera into the pipes and found that there was a point in the main line between the house and the street where the camera stops and it was too difficult to see what the problem might be. The camera has a transmitter on the end of it and they used a detector to find where under the lawn the camera was sitting. They suspected the pipe has broken and would need to dig it up to replace the pipe. The $125 dollar bill was now going to be $4500. They dug up the lawn and found the broken pipe. They took the opportunity to up sell my father on relining the length of the pipe, which given that the plumbing was laid in the 1960’s, relining was probably a wise choice. After two days without facilities and $10k dollars later, all was back to normal.
December turned out to be a month from hell!