User blog:TurtleShroom/Mimmie
Good evening.
I'd like to announce this online on the CPFW before anyone else online gets to hear it. My close ties to this great website make it only fitting that those who mattered most in my childhood hear this first.
My great-grandmother, Agnes Azalee Avery, is finally dying.
Born on December 20th, 1919 AD, she is currently ninety three. We call her "Mimmie". Three years ago, we were all shocked to discover that she had a massive malignant tumor of cancer lodged in her colon. There was no choice but to operate on a ninety year old woman. We caught it early, but it had actually stopped her colon, so we had to get it surgically removed by completely extracting the entire large intestine and rerouting entire the small intestine to a new exit hole in her abdomen. (This is called an Illeostomy. Miraculously, she defied the expectation that she would die on the operating table and was pronounced cancer free.
Three years passed before any new worries surfaced, and then, ultimately, the cancer returned. Some time between September of 2013 and the summer of 2014, Mimmie returned under the knife when new cancer polyps sprouted in what was left of her rectum and anus. Those were scraped out in a second surgery on a ninety two year old woman. She again survived the surgery, defeating all expectations again, and continued in a relatively pain free state until today.
Now, on this very day, I have received the final chapter in her life's story. Returning for a checkup on her rectum because they again found blood, she was put through a simple non-invasive screening. The surgeon was stunned by what he saw and could not believe she had survived with a cancer this powerful for three years. You see, he had discovered a Stage IV terminal cancerous tumor that had swollen to the point that it had started splitting the lining of her rectum and induced the bleeding. This tumor, which didn't exist at the start of 2014 AD, had now so large that it could not possibly be removed. To ease the pain and prevent death by bleeding, the surgeon sealed the lacerations that the tumor had split open
She was rediagnosed with colon cancer and now has an undetermined, finite time to live. The doctors refused to give a prognosis because she survived three years with this raging cancer within her. They are unsure how she lived this long and cannot be sure if she'll beat the odds again. In defiance of all known medicinal rationale, she has also lived nearly a full year with a Stage IV cancer, and only now has this cancer finally come to claim her life.
My great-grandmother informed me several years ago that she was "ready to go" when it was time to be called into the Beatific Vision way up yonder. She said that her life had no regrets, that she had nothing left on any bucket list, that she did not need any additional requests before she left. She has been surrounded by family every day for the past two years. She lived to see me and my sister graduate, and saw me get my first job, and saw my sister go to college.
I theorize that she will finally pass away after this year's Christmas. Her husband of fifty years, Sidney Long Avery (whom we called "Pop") died in 2000 AD on December 26th, the day after Christmas. She always loved the holidays and insisted on being wheeled out to eat Thanksgiving with us and unwrap Christmas presents.
All I have to do now is wait for her end to come. As a Christian, I rest in the peacible knowledge that Mimmie is guranteed an eternal afterlife with her husband in Paradise.
If it all rolls out as planned, I will be a pall-bearer at her funeral.
Deus Vult ("God wills it"),
-TURTLESHROOM
