Keep it moov'in noth'in ta see here....except a few skeletons in the closet!!

My 45th bday!! I desperately wanted a photo of me in front of my cake with my fingers in the air just like my mom made me do right from when I was just a pip squeek. My fingers are in the air, but they read 4 and 5 on my side of the table and 54 to everyone else and the photog, James had a good laugh! I had a fantastic time, considering how sick I was. The expensive champagne was a huge help!

I admit, was a whiner in my blogs about getting stood up in the past and wanting desperately to have a birthday. Birthdays are very important to me because I lost my mother to cancer at a very young age. The little girl in me was convinced that some people just simply do not live past the age of 37, and that to me then was old!!! I've managed to make it all the way to 37, barely, and now cheated it all the way to 45!!! Creepy thing is, will I make it to 54!!!??

I've been getting increasingly ill over the last six to eight months. Started worrying and attempted to find my mothers medical records, to see what exactly killed her - to no avail.

Its been soo long ago, 29 years, that the medical records have all been destroyed. I started to ask long lost relatives and found that out of mom's 9 siblings only 4 remain - all have died of cancer. I could not get a conclusive medical reason for my mothers death other than "Cancer". I asked my father if he could help. They were divorcing during her almost four year fight with cancer so he was not privy to her experiences. But he did however step forward and take care of her entire funeral arrangements. So as it turns out, he's had the coroners report in with all the other funeral papers all this time.

This is where that frig'in 750 year old Burmis tree comes in! You know, the one I have been carrying around on my back for 29 years!! And was most happy to have it removed from my life once and for all? Welll  its BAAAACCCK!

-Long story not so short of it is.... My brother and I were home alone with mom when she died. They sent her home to die. Her boyfriend at the time had missed a lot of work because of her illness and was busy trying to catch up so he was away often, leaving me and my 9 year old brother alone with her in a rural community and his commute was two hours in the winter I was 15.

I missed a lot of school to be there for her, bathe her, feed her and administer her meds and pain killers. The times I did manage to get off to school to escape the horrors and just be with my friends were interrupted with feelings of guilt. I would cross the street from the school to the phone booth and made calls several times a day and hang up just to check and see if she was still alive. To this day I cringe when I see glass phone booths and refuse to make a call from one of them.

On one particular day, the 13th of Jan 1981, I made it out to the dreaded phone booth, made the call and it went unanswered. I panicked. I immediately hunted down the town drug dealer "Pinball" and paid him to drive me home, he was paid handsomely because we lived on the outskirts of the rural town, a good 45 mins. There were no taxis back then in that town.

She was alive but barely conscious. I gave her her meds and managed to get her to swallow her vitamin shake concoction. Within an hour she was somewhat lucid and was asking for a bath. She tried to have more food and asked for more morphine. I knew that she'd had enough. I stalled with her during bath time but could see that she was obviously in a lot of pain.

My mothers condition was getting visibly worse, she was vomiting regularly over the last few months, she carried a bucket - that damned bucket was always full and it was always me that had to fetch and empty. So when she was asking for more morphine and was vomiting I figured it was just not able to stay in her system long enough to work. So I gave her more and kept emptying the damned bucket.

Two hours later was her scheduled time for another administer of all meds. So I did what I was told. I tried to feed her a vitamin shake for dinner, cleaned her up and put her in her pj's and tucked her into her favorite blanket on the couch so she could watch tv. I went to make dinner for my brother and I. She called out for more painkillers. I gave in. Within mins she was dead. I heard her last breath, (or lack there of as it turns out from the coroners report). The TV was playing that haunting theme song of the show M*A*S*H. I can no longer endure that song, it physically cripples me motionless into a kind of post traumatic shock.

For 29 years I've never known if the actual cause of death was by overdose. I've carried that with me like the heaviest Burmis tree trunk EVER. So 29 years later, pleading with dad to send her coroner's records, he calls and says he's found the coroners report and he will be sending it by email - I froze.

I'm at one hell of a dilemma at that point, I NEED to read the report for my own medical research, but do I NEED to read the real reason of how she actually died? After years of anguish of not knowing, the guilt, the anxiety the fits of depression and bouts with nervous breakdowns and thoughts of suicide, the evil night sweats and constant night mares, did I kill her? Or is her Cancer now killing me??

On the 13th of September 2010, (one day before my 45th bday) I make a call to the medical hot line for help to find a family doctor and I am passed over to a symptoms assessment line. They assess my symptoms over the phone and told me to go to an emergency room within four hours of the phone call. It seemed that I was more than just feeling sick!!!

I did NOT go. I was planning my very much anticipated, (and may realistically be one of my last birthday parties), actually and finally happening within 24 hours, and I was DAMNED WELL GOING TO BE THERE IF THEY HAD TO CARRY ME OUT ON A FUCKING STRETCHER!!!!!! How's that for diva behavior!!!! - A girls godda do what a girls godda make due!!!

Here we are, weeks after the infamous "barely made it there birthday party" I have gone thru 9 invasive tests and counting. They will asses the results next week, as suspicion would have it- on the 13th of October. I continue with other more invasive tests the following week.

Question is....will this Mad Photographer live to shoot her own 54th bday party!!??

In the next edition of DIARY OF A MAD PHOTOGRAPHER: The story of dueling doctors, details of the coroners report that just may have saved my life, and the quest for medical marijuana!!!

Let the games begin!! Whaaaaaat? PPPffftttt, drama, no drama here!!!