Two months lapse in attention to this blog. No slacking either.

Something happened.

That makes me think of Mark Moscowitz, in the film "Stone Reader" talking about Joseph Heller's book Something Happened . I saw Mark's film but never read Heller's book. The film was one of those inspirations that defy description of the feelings it evoked in me. A writer with something to say, getting something new to write about. But that something new is so overwhelming that it leaves no time to write. That's what happened to me. I got busy with a situation that prohibited me from seeking distraction, or expression in this blog.

Mom hadn't been feeling well. It was nothing new. You get used to such things, and assume inevitability, encroaching old age, and easy things of that nature. But one day she found she could not swallow solid food. This was something new.

A trip to her personal physician set the wheel into motion. Endoscopy, discovery, biopsy, more discovery, referal to an oncologist. She had to wait two weeks to meet with the oncologist. In that time liquid food kept her going, but she lost at least ten pounds in the process. The meeting with the oncologist renewed the overwhelming motion.

Now - nearly two months later - she sits in her recliner, hooked up to an enteral food pump wich shuffles medical grade liguid food through a plastic tube, through her abdominal wall, and into her stomach, just below the shadowy distrubance that they like to call a tumor. They dress it up with fancy words like "neoplasm", "carcinoma", and such. I accompanied her through all of the tests at UNMH. The experience was fascinating, to say the least. World-class medicine practiced in a fancy place. But in simple terms they call it cancer.

She sits in that chair, writing on a notepad, while I sit at the computer desk. In her home. My apartment sits gathering dust. I've been sleeping here on the living room floor, while, each night, she sleeps in her recliner so that the liquid food doesn't backflow and choke her. I was the one whom fate called to take hold of the enteral pump, and the accompanying care in keeping her alive.

She's doing pretty good, considering the situation. Hospice care is pending approval. She got weary of the tests and the hospital. She wants to sit at home and let Nature do what it will.

I'd like to write about it, and the extenuating circustances that have made my life into something large, scary, and confusing. Maybe I will write about it as I go along. Maybe. I'd like that.