Here’s another glimpse into life in the Burgess household.
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One night this week, we got…SURPRISE…more snow! The flakes were huge and were really coming down, but it didn’t last long.
Just as we took this picture, it switched over to rain and washed away completely by midnight. That’s okay! Hayden has enough snow days to make up already, and the school system decided to make them up on Saturdays, once a month for three months. Ugh!
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Hayden and I were asked to represent Green Run Collegiate during their Open House for potential new parents and students for next school year. We had a great time answering questions for families, but we got home kind of late. Then Hayden suddenly realized that the next day was going to be Valentine’s and asked if there was anything he could take to share with his friends. Voila! At 9 PM, mom saved the day by breaking out a Valentine’s Funfetti Cake Mix and whipping up a batch of cookies with it! I even drew hearts with frosting on top.
Hayden came home with an empty container, thanked me, and said they were a big hit. He said he got lots of hugs from all the girls. 
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Happy Valentine’s Day! I stopped at the Dollar Tree as soon as I dropped Hayden off at school so I could hunt for another Funfetti cake mix…I had planned to make goodies for the kids but had sacrificed it for Hayden’s school treats. No such luck! They were all out.
But while we were in the store, Holden grabbed a heart-shaped box of chocolates and told me he wanted to buy them for me for Valentine’s. I told him I appreciated that he had thought of me, but I I didn’t want him to spend his money on me. He looked up at me almost in tears and explained that he really wanted to do something nice for me. My mommy heart swelled, and I shed some tears right there in the store and realized I shouldn’t stop him from having a giving heart.
Next thing I know, Haylee grabbed one and said she wanted to buy me one, too! So here they are standing in line with their dollars. So, so sweet! This was the first time that my kids have spent their own money to buy me something. Steve also left me the most beautiful card, which I found on my computer when I got home. In all of our 19+ years of marriage, he’s never said such sweet things to me. Best Valentine’s Day ever!
When we got home, I gave the kids their goodie bags with little surprises in them.
Here they are with their new Valentine’s Webkinz! They were so excited. They have been busy collecting Webkinz for over a year now. Holden loves to collect all the different frogs, and Haylee is starting to collect the monkeys. They’re so cute! They also got some mini M&M’s and a sucker.
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On Saturday morning, Hayden headed off to school (their first Saturday snow make-up day), only he wasn’t staying there. He was getting on a bus to head to Jamestown for the whole weekend! He was one of five students from his school who were selected to attend a Student Leadership Conference. He will be staying at the 4-H Club out there.
This is the first time Hayden has ever had an overnight stay away from home without us! Sniff, sniff. Doesn’t he look so grown up here?!? What’s up with that?!? Anyway, he’ll be back on Sunday night. It’s going to be weird spending a weekend without him, but I spent Saturday working on our taxes, and that helped the time pass more quickly.
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On Saturday morning right after Hayden left, I got some bad news. The oncologist confirmed that my mom does have lung cancer. The pleural effusion returned, and they drained another 2 liters of fluid in the 4 days she’d been at the hospital in Little Rock. It’s full of malignant cells, and it seems there’s nothing they can do for her. The doctor said she would not survive surgery or chemotherapy, so those are not options for her because she is immobile from her stroke 4 years ago. He said he can try giving her a couple of drugs, but they don’t commonly work for people who have been smokers in the past, and they would only be aimed at prolonging the end, not in providing a cure. He was going to install a port in her chest this weekend to allow a nurse to come to her house once a week to drain off the fluid from the pleural effusion going forward, and he wanted to do an MRI before she is discharged on Monday or Tuesday to ascertain whether or not it has spread to her brain. Small cell lung cancer commonly spreads quickly to the brain, even if it’s not detected in an MRI.
I am so upset…I’m not quite sure how to process this news. I did some research and found out that when this condition with the lung cancer with the malignant pleural effusion is left untreated, the prognosis is only 2-4 months. With treatment, it’s 2-6 months. Either way, this is a shock to my whole family, and that’s not a lot of time for my mom to come to grips with this being the beginning of the end. She seems to be willing to fight, but it just doesn’t seem that there’s anything she can do to better the outcome.
If you’re a Christian, I’d sure appreciate it if you could pray for my mom, that she would find the peace and comfort that only He can provide, and that she would not suffer during her last days. I lost my dad to a massive heart attack in 2001 at age 70. My mom is 78. I can’t imagine what it will be like to not have any parents in this world. I have loved them both so much.
I’m really thankful that I was able to go and visit my mom at the end of August. In my heart of hearts, I knew it was probably going to be my last visit with her, and it was so hard to leave. But I have that time with her to treasure in my heart, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
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That’s a wrap! Stay tuned to see what we have in store this next week!
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