My mother, who found a lump in her breast in early April, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Much to our surprise, why was it that the little innocent lady, who had done no wrong in her life, was the one being diagnosed with something so horrible?
When her doctor decided that she should go for an all over body scan to make sure that everything else was okay, they found that she had ovarian cancer that was much more intense than the breast cancer they had previously found.
In shock, scared and completely devastated with this prognosis, I was left helpless. I was always one to pray, but only when I needed it. I had no one else to turn to but ‘God’ or whoever I thought this entity may be. I cried each night before I went to sleep, begging Him to give me a sign that He was real, anything to let me know that my mom wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Like many young adults, I have always been on the fence with my faith in God and religion, but one sign was all I needed to keep me going.
For the last few months, my mother has been going to treatments, doctors appointments, surgeries, tests and everything else under the sun to get her on the path to recovery. Still, each time I would be worried or nervous, I begged God to give me a sign, and still I saw nothing...
...Until a few weeks ago. My mom had a doctors appointment early in the afternoon while I was at my internship. After her appointment, she came to my office to sit and eat lunch with me. As she talked about her discussion with the doctor that day, I noticed a little bit of hope in her facial expression. I had not seen a look like this on my mother’s face for months. She leaned in and said to me, “Honey, wanna hear something cool?”
I said, “Of course I do mom, anything to make today better.”
She started to smile and said:
“For the last few months since I found out about my lump, I have been praying every night. I have hundreds of people praying for me. I have been going to healing services and taking time out to take care for me. Your grandparents got me this oil, which had apparently been blessed by a priest, and rather than laughing at them and thinking it was all a joke, I took the oil and put it on my lump each day. The other day, before my first chemo treatment, I was scared. I looked in the mirror and checked out my lump like I had every day since April. For whatever reason, I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t find it. It was not there. I thought this was just some strange situation and maybe it was hiding, and considering I hadn’t received any treatment yet, there is no way that this lump could just be gone. When I went to my appointment today and asked my doctor to feel for my lump, she could not find it. I was shocked, and I still am shocked, because this is not likely for someone with my diagnosis. My doctor looked at me and said, “I don’t know how to explain this, I don’t know if anyone knows how to explain this, but I cannot feel the lump.”
For the first time in months, I had seen my mom smile. I had seen her look at me and sigh with relief as if she were to tell me that everything is going to be okay. Her doctors cannot explain how the lump just simply disappeared.
"How does the lump just disappear?" you may ask. I know I did. The only answer I could think of: This was God’s sign that I’ve been begging for for months.
Maybe they originally found the lump to lead them to find her ovarian cancer from the all-over body scan. Maybe fate exists and worked in our favor this time in order to get my mom on the road to recovery. Now, at week 10 of chemotherapy, we are still praying every day for a quick and total recovery.
