Good Timing
My mother was in remission from breast cancer but was having severe headaches and other symptoms. She went to her regular oncologist’s office. They checked her out and said that her calcium levels were slightly elevated, but they also said that she should just take some painkillers and head home.
Fortunately, she had been planning to visit a friend in Rochester, Minnesota over the weekend. Given how bad she was feeling, she called her friend and said, “I can’t make it.” During this conversation, she mentioned her calcium level as being the only thing wrong with her that the doctors could find.
By pure luck, the friend she was going to see had taken a job in an oncologist’s office at the Mayo Clinic one week prior. Her boss, the oncologist, was walking through the office as she hung up the phone and He asked her what the call was about.
My mother’s friend explained that her plans had been canceled for the weekend because my mother was ill. Then, she offhandedly mentioned my mother’s calcium level. The oncologist’s face literally turned white as soon as he heard the number.
“She needs to get to an emergency room now. She is a 0.1 or 0.2 mg/dL away from falling into a coma and never waking up.” And he was right.
My mother’s hometown doctors had basically sent her home to perish because they were apparently too incompetent to recognize life-threatening hypercalcemia when they saw it.
Thanks to this improbable chain of events, I was able to rush my mother to the emergency room where she was able to get the calcium flushed out of her system. As it later turned out, the breast cancer had moved into her bones and was leaching calcium into her blood.
A bunch of other things happened next before this was fully over. The calcium was flushed from her system and she went on aromatase inhibitors that fought cancer. There was also some other medication that helped prevent the calcium from leaching.
A few years later, however, the cancer was still on the move and she developed tumors in her uterus and intestinal tract. Sadly, she passed this past February. But I cherish the extra time that my brother and I had with her.
She was able to attend both of our weddings, all thanks to the friend that told her to get to the hospital immediately. I am forever grateful for whatever made it possible for that chance occurrence to go down the way it did.
I can’t even imagine how awful it would have been otherwise. Story Credit: Reddit/hamlet9000