Living with Non-Hodgkin's Disease

My mother fell in December 07 and they found a mass in her lower abdominal area. After months of being sent back and forth for tests, more than an hour each way and in so much pain and sickness, was told that, yes he was 90% sure it was lymphoma. He told her, if you had to have cancer, this was the one to have because it is treatable and gave us hope. And still after 2 byopsis of the lymph nodes with no diagnoses and a bone biopsy and still no diagnoses, they did a surgical biopsy and sent that to the same lab that could not identify the first ones. It was finally sent to MD Anderson and they made the final diagnoses,Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma almost 4 months later. By then her kidneys were failing and was in and out of the hospital and it was to late. I wanted a second opinion but she just kept on saying she trusted them and they kept on giving her hope.

NO ONE should have to go though that much pain and have to die anyway, all the while being told there is still hope right up to the very end. I feel she was robbed of her last days with us thinking there was still time to do and say things we needed to with her. The end was heartbreaking for us .I want doctors to own up if they don’t know what to do and TELL THE TRUTH so people can prepare to die. She was not. She was afraid of being in pain, and that is not fair.

Time is everything. Don’t let TIME be the enemy. And tell the people you love every day how much you love them AND how much you will miss them.