My mother amazes me. I was just looking back over some old posts and saw the ones from the last time she was in the hospital a couple months ago. She was on oxygen, unable to walk, and I was so afraid we were going to lose her. Now she seems almost normal. Not strong, not really LOOKING like herself, but stable, functional, able to do things. It's hard to know what to think about things. Every time she has a downswing, it seems so likely that we've reached the end of the line. But so far, she keeps coming back to some version of normalcy.

The five-year survival rate for people with stage four lung cancer is in the single digits. We are four months into year five. I wonder how many people in history made it this far, much less manage to lead a mostly-normal life. What is the six-year survival rate, I wonder? Is it zero? Are there literally no people who make six years with this kind of sickness? She has good medical care and resilient genes but she's also brave, tough, intelligent about it all. She hates her swollen moon face and fuzzy chemo hair, but they are the badges of someone who has carried this without it dragging her down yet, who has beat every odd against her. She doesn't like to talk about the sort of thing, it makes her uncomfortable for some reason, but I tell her I'm proud of her. Not many people in all of history, after all, who made it through what she has.