The Times...They Have a'Changed...

Looking over my blog, I see that it has been about five months since my last entry. So much life, and lack thereof, has happened since that last entry, and I write now as a way to deal with where life has taken us all these past few months. I guess I can't move forward, until I move back a little bit, to tell you our life for the past few months.

Well, the last entry found the Baillo clan moving cross country again. It was a promise I made to my mother when we visited her earlier this year (Jan-Mar 2010). I promised that we would move back for a year, to help her with whatever she might need, and more importantly, so we can all be together. Her conditioning was worsening, and the promise was made with two contingencies being planned for. Should she live through that year, then obviously that would mean, her health has somehow improved, and we could move to Oregon guilt free, and be closer to the family in case of emergencies, instead of NY. If, the worst happened, and she died in that year we were there, we would be there to help carry out her funeral and final plans exactly as she wanted, and to take care of all the little details. We could then move to Oregon after all has been said and done, and begin picking up the pieces and starting life there, with that chapter closed.

We arrived in CA July 19th, 2010. And it was good to always be there with her. It took Katie and I both about a month to find a job, in California's shitty economy, but we did. She found a job with some industrial supply production place, and I found an accounting job with Hollywood Park Race Track, and life cruised on. Katie and I, with the baby, took one of the bedrooms upstairs, while Hailey took the other. It was cramped. It's hard not having your own bedroom after living in houses on our own, especially after the last monster sized house we had in New York, sitting on an acre. I'll be honest, I HATE Los Angeles/Southern CA. It's overpopulated, materialistic, and cutthroat, but I was happy to be there to bring happiness to my mom. It was all worth it to see the joy on her face at having her beloved grandkids around being goofy as they do best.

My mother's breast cancer had gotten much worse. November 2009, after being convinced by her oncologist that she should be cancer free, she got the bomb dropped on her that her first cancer was gone, but it appeared that her breast cancer had mutated into Inflammatory Breast Cancer. This version of breast cancer is the most deadly, and least understood/researched, of all the breast cancer variations known. So, she had no choice but to undergo chemo, again, this time more aggressively, but the kicker was that her heart was permanently weakened by the first fight, where she only had 30-40% functionality. So they couldnt give her the "top tier" chemo drugs, since most of them could potentially do damage to the heart. So, she got second line drugs. Her immune system was non existent. She would get infections all over her body at any time, and every cold, turned into pneumonia. Her reduced heart function always resulted in fluid in her lungs, which led to extended hosptial stays. Her affected breast was COVERED in infections and sores, which kept her awake at night in pain, and sometimes just from the smell of the rotting of her flesh. It was not pretty for her.

After having a hard time breathing my mother went into the hospital during the first part of October 2010, and they found she had a severe chest infection, but the kicker was she had no fever, so they doubted it was pneumonia, or at least "regular" pneumonia. She was there for two weeks, being IV'd 3-4 different types of antibiotics at the same time, and the infection never went away. She always said that she believed this would be her last hospital stay, that she thought she would die during this stay...little did we all know the truth behind that speculation. October 19th she was supposed to be released, but they held her a day longer to observe. October 20th, she was to be released again, and they held her again, but because in the span of one day she gained a great amount of weight, which was obviously liquid. She was retaining water. They looked for it in her lungs, and her body in general...but we later realized that her kidneys were probably shutting down.

October 21 I get the call to come. When I arrive I find out that my mom has had respiratory arrest, and is now unconcious, and the nurse tells me that this is now the "end stage", and to say goodbye (I will go into more details about this in other posts), because it's coming soon. Not more than a couple hours after that my mom stopped breathing, and left this world, and her suffering forever. My world crumbled around me, and I weeped in her hospital room. I cried at not having a mother to guide me, to see my kids grow and get married, all those moments lost at my age of 31, and my mom's age of 62. I made all the necessary calls to all the family and friends, and I went home to rest, and cry some more.

After that first day I told myself "Okay enough crying...you need to suck it up, you have people depending on you. You have a funeral to plan. You have important things needing to be done. Suck it up". And suck it up I did. That is the very reason I decided to write again. When I sucked it up, I threw up a wall around my grief. It's what I needed to do, to stay strong and not fall apart during the week and a half it took to plan my mom's funeral. Every day, that grief tried to rip those walls down, and every day I made those walls thicker, and thicker, and thicker. I got through the planning, and the funeral, and all the details without a single tear, without one detail missed, I made my mom proud I think.

But I'm writing this blog again, because now that the nitty gritty is done, and I WANT to start grieving...I can't. These mental walls are the thickest I've ever put up in my whole life, and the end result are walls so thick, I don't know how to bring them down. I have no clue where to begin. I reach for that grief where it sat the day my mom died, and I run into the wall. I have tried for the past month since my mom was buried, to try to reach that sadness, that dispair, that grief, so I can now cry my eyes out. I have felt like such a heartless bastard this past month, because I have tried to cry for my mother, one of the greatest human beings to walk this earth, and I just can't. So, I now am writing again, because writing has always been a way for me to sub/unconsciously tap into my emotions. By talking about it all, I feel that i may be able to start bringing down that wall stone, by stone, so that I can grieve for my mother.

So, no one will probably read this, but that's fine, since this is for me anyway. If you do follow the blog, then that'll explain the boost in activity that will follow this one. I'll probably delve deeper into the actual moments my mom died, the funeral, her life, the planning, etc, just so I can make her real to myself again. I think i've disassociated myself, and that's why I can't feel anything.

Anyway, more to come.