My Story of Mom's Cancer.

This post has taken me a long time to write.  I picked out the photos first.  Wrote up the story, and then let it sit for a while.

June, 2007.  I returned from several weeks overseas to find 5, 6, maybe 7 voice mail messages from my family.  While I had been in Europe, Mom came down with a severe case of jaundice and digestive problems that landed her in the Emergency Room.  An exam found two tumors on her liver, and she had surgery to remove them for biopsy.

I only had about 3-5 weeks to decide if I was going to visit before my Obsterician grounded me... but Mom hadn't cleared me for her HIPAA yet, so I couldn't get very good information to make the decision.  We had so much going on that I ended up not travelling.  During that time, the tests came back with a diagnosis of Biliary Cancer, cancer of the bile ducts, also known as cholangiocarcinoma.

The outside life of a Student Engineer

January 11, 1996, I started my job as a student engineer.  Backing up a bit, my mother took the day off work to drive me to St. Louis, through driving snow and occasional blizzard conditions.  I had a furnished two-bedroom apartment, and a roommate.

My roommate had arrived to discover that "furnished" was minimal.  We had no shower curtains, no dish cloths or dish towels, no soaps or even toilet paper.  So about the time that I arrived, she was making a run to Target to pick up those essentials.