Oh, there you are.....

Tonight was laundry night.  Nothing exciting.  My mom was scheduled to have her 3rd chemo treatment today.  I was really nervous, as the last time she ended up in the hospital for a week.  I tried to call her after work, but didn't get an answer.

So as I was folding clothes, my phone rang.  The caller id said it was my moms house.  Expecting it to be my step-dad, calling to give me a chemo update, I answered with my usual "hey-low".  My moms voice, on the other end, replied with "what are you doing?"  Even as I typed that, I could hear my moms voice in my head.  I lost my breath for a moment.

Back in January, my mom started losing her voice.  It was her first "outside" symptom.  The first one I noticed.  You don't realize how comforting someones voice is, until it isn't there.  I've blogged before about how I would give anything to hear her voice just one more time.  You can read that entry here: You will never get it...

I've been thinking a lot lately, about things my mom has said to me over the years, that I would give my right arm to hear again, in her voice.  Her calling me "toots".  Her saying orange, only pronouncing it "oinge".  Her saying "Hi, this is Jackie.  Greg and I aren't home right now.  If you want to leave a message....do it now".

And today, when she said "what are you doing?", I got a little glimpse of that.  I know she needs to rest.  I know she hasn't had a voice in a LONG time, and it probably exhausted her to speak even a little, so I couldn't bring myself to ask her to say all of the things I wanted to hear her say just one more time.  But you can be assured, I DID tell her to hurry up and re-record that answering machine greeting!


And just as a quick treatment update, they didn't do chemo today.  They instead chose to drain the fluid out of her lung.  She said they got about 2 mason jars full of fluid out.  Unfortunately, the woman that did it was NOT very nice, and caused my mom a LOT of pain.  But the rest of her day went very well, and she sounded AMAZING!

Mom, if you happen to be reading this, I'm serious....fix the damn answering machine!