Pauls Ponderings - November 15

Thanksgiving is still a week away, and since I’ve been writing this column, several years I’ve devoted the one before Thanksgiving to things I’m thankful for. And, due to the fact that our two papers are being combined into one next week and will be in the mail on Wednesday, I’ll have another chance to write about thanks if I choose to do so. However, today’s column is devoted to giving thanks to and for a very special person, my mother, and the adversary she has overcome in the past three-plus years.
I’m sure several of you readers know my mother, Ruth (Sneed) Hayes. She was born and raised in the Jones Chapel/Gradyville area, and has lived practically her entire life in the community. While she’s always been well-known in that end of the county (where, years ago when I was growing up, we were kin to about half the folks around), a lot more people got to know her when my dad and her, along with the late Clyde Beard and his wife Doris, ran a pool room on the square for several years. Mom also worked part-time, off and on, at Moore’s Pool Room (more kinfolk) up until a couple of years ago.
My mother was one of those fortunate individuals who never seemed to be sick, with the exception of an occasional cold in the winter-time or some other minor ailment every few years. Other than for the birth of my younger sister, I can only recall her ever being in the hospital but one other time before my father passed away in January 2003.
Alas, Mom’s almost perfect record of excellent health started going downhill at that time. The day my father died in Louisville, we came back home, and she slipped and broke her foot while we were changing vehicles at my house. This hobbled her for a while, but she gradually began to recover. Then, the real blow came.
In April, 2003, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had to undergo a complete mastectomy. Being the battler she is, though, this didn’t keep her down for long, and a few months later she started back working part time and things pretty well returned to normal.
Mom was diligent about keeping all her doctors’appointments, undergoing all the various tests they do on people who have cancer every six months or so. Everything continued to check out great until shortly after Thanksgiving last year, when some blood work came back abnormal. All through the holidays, the doctors continued doing blood work, CT scans, PET scans, etc., but nothing showed up. Finally, in early January of this year, more tests were done in Bowling Green, and these finally revealed that her cancer had come back, and had spread to her abdomen area.
Her oncologist, Dr. Thomas Young, told my sisters and I that the cancer had spread very rapidly, and that the tumor count from her blood tests was in excess of 1,200, the highest he’d every seen in one of his patients. Her surgeon, Dr. John Korba, likened the spread of her cancer through her abdomen to the way pellets scatter from a shotgun blast. Needless to say, the prognosis that both doctors gave us at that time wasn’t the most encouraging. If chemotherapy didn’t work, it would be only a matter of months.
However, as we expected, Mom chose to try the chemo. Because the cancer was located in her stomach and she couldn’t eat but very little, Dr. Young said it couldn’t be real strong chemo, so he recommended using chemo pills.
Well, Mom started taking the chemo pills (three weeks one, one week off), and gradually she began to show some improvement. The side effects she suffered were relatively mild compared to what a lot of people go through, and she gradually began to be able to eat again and started gaining weight. Throughout this year, she had numerous blood tests done, underwent several CT and PET scans, and with each set of results, improvement was shown.
A week ago this past Friday, I took Mom to Westlake Regional Hospital for blood work and a CT scan, and this past Friday, I took her to see Dr. Young in Glasgow. And, when the doctor came into the room, he had the greatest of news. Her latest CT scan had turned up nothing, and her tumor makers from the blood test had dropped all the way to 39.6 (from a high of 1,200), with 38 or below being normal.
As of today, Mom’s back on another round of chemo, but there is hope that she might be able to cease taking the treatment, at least for a while, in the near future. She doesn’t have her cancer whipped right now, but it’s definitely tucking its tail under its legs and is on the run.
Dr. Young continues to be amazed at my mother’s recovery (he says she has responded to chemo treatment better than any patient he’s ever had), and we are too. But, Dr. Young also said something else on Friday and that I’m in total agreement with also. He said that it couldn’t have been just the chemo, that God had played a big part in the recovery too.
Mom, I have to thank God and the doctors for your recovery.