This is the last good photograph I have of my mother, Adelaide Mary Robinson-- here with my daughter Mallory. It was in 1990 and she was just 57 years old. Just a few years later she would look like she was 100, thanks to inflammatory breast cancer and Denver General Hospital.

In 1990 my mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer. After a complete hysterectomy, my mother was declared to be in remission.....they only consider you to be cured from cancer if you end up dying from something else. Because she had had a "female" type cancer, she had a mammogram done every six months rather than every 2 years as is standard, because you are more suseptible to other "female" type cancers. My mother went faithfully for the next 5 years. May 1995, 2 months before it would have been exactly 5 years since her last cancer diagnosis, when you can usually consider yourself "clean", she was diagnosed with stage IV Inflammatory Breast Cancer. They told her to "get her estate in order" as she would have at most until the end of the year. Apparently the cancer had been growing in her breast since 1991....however the very same technician read her mammograms each and every time they were done, and missed the tumor each and every time as well.

My mother bravely fought the cancer, first with chemotherapy before a radical double mastectomy---she spent her 62nd birthday recouperating from surgery. For the next three years she endured chemotherapy...first every three weeks, then every two, then every week. Then there was the 93 doses of radiation therapy on her chest, neck and sides....each time making her skin more burned, and her bones more brittle. Later, just a good sneeze would crack a rib. With each dose, her lungs would get drier, until later it was difficult for her to catch a breath. And she would get increasinly more tired, and all of this damage was permanent. I watched her deteriorate...from being the strongest person I knew, to someone I had to push in a wheelchair to the doctor's appointments. Between the steroids they put her on, and the lack of lymph nodes in her arm pits-removed during the mastectomy- she puffed up like a balloon to the point where her skin glowed from being stretched and she could barely see.

It was sudden that she started to lose her balance....twice she fell when she was alone. The second time was in the bathroom when she was readying for bed. She hit her head on a statuette, and laid on the floor all night--too determined to buzz for help--until she felt she had enough energy to crawl to her bed. The decline was swift after that.....she suddenly completely lost her appetite, slept almost constantly, and saw things that weren't there. I stayed with her for the next week and a half after she fell, witnessing this decline, until I forced her to go to the hospital to find out what was wrong....maybe her potassium levels were off or perhaps she was dehydrated or something. I bathed her to get ready to go, and was taken aback at just how fragile she had become. She knew it, too. She asked me, as she tried to use her walker to get to the bathroom "why am I still doing this?" That was November 5, 1998.

They kept her overnight at the hospital to run tests to determine the cause of her symptoms. November 6 was her 65th birthday.....we visited her at the hospital, trying not to upset her because we could't understand what conversation she was trying to have. But you could see the frustration on her face. That evening we left, planning to return the next morning and hopefully get some answers to our questions. That morning as I was getting ready to go, the phone rang.....and dread hit me. I had had a feeling when I got up that something terrible was to happen. I sensed that my mother would have brain cancer and would slip into a coma. How I wish I was wrong. The call was from her doctor.....my mother had decided to go to the restroom without asking for assistance, and fell onto the floor....smashing her head onto the hard tile. Within an hour, she slipped into what they called "a non-responsive state".

We rushed to the hospital, hoping for a miracle, that she would wake up.... but she never did. The cancer had indeed spread to her brain and metasticized. Now it was time to watch her die. I blamed myself mostly. I made her go to the hospital, against her wishes. If she hadn't been there, she wouldn't have hit her head on a hard floor. Or if I'd made her go sooner. Or if I had put the side rails up to her bed the night before so she couldn't get out. Or if I hadn't given her grief over my relationship troubles years before, maybe she wouldn't have gotten cancer to begin with. But none of that mattered....she was dying now. A feeding tube would just give her a stomach infection, the doctor explained. But I was the one who ultimately had to decide not to put one in. Now I had to feel like I was starving her to death. And death came slowly. With each groan she gave, I hoped it meant she was coming back....coming back to me so I could tell her that I loved her one last time...or to be able to take her to the park like I promised her I would when she got out of the hospital.

But a week passed, and she did not wake up. I stayed with her at the hospital, sleeping along side her...just in case. Then I decided that if she was going to die, she would do it in her own bed, in her own apartment. So I took her home. We all took turns going in and talking to her. Yanni played in the background. I bathed her. I put Q-tips dipped in tea to her lips. I changed her "bag" until nothing came out. I watched her age another 20 years in that 10 days we were home. But even in her state, she still showed her strength. It wasn't until the day before she passed away that she let me remove the dentures from her mouth.

Her heart rate excellerated to such a high rate, and her moaning got more regular, they finally brought in a morphine pump for her. At the end I had to push the button every 15 minutes, the earliest the machine's timer would allow me, to keep her comfortable. I laid awake with her all night,determined she would not go alone.

My mother finally passed away the morning of November 18, 1998. It feels like it was yesterday. I lost my very best friend. I miss her terribly.


PLEASE!!!! Get checked regularly for cancer, and if you even SUSPECT something is wrong, get a second opinion!!!! Even if you have to pay for the exam yourself--IS YOUR LIFE NOT WORTH $95??????????? Don't put yourself through what my mother did, and don't make your family endure watching it happen! Get a mammogram and pap smear done on schedule!!

For more information on cancer prevention, detection and treatment, go to The American Cancer Society website
Save a life----your own. Because you're worth it.