My mother, Linda D Knatat was born February 23, 1954 in East St. Louis. She married my father Randy Knatat on March 20, 1976. They were high school sweethearts. In 2007 she attended a Senior Choir trip with me and my high school to San Antonio, TX where we attended a ranch. She was in a hay bailing race when her partner got her foot stuck in a mole hole and fell face first. My mother went down shortly after, busting out all of her scar tissue in her chest and breaking her right foot. Several weeks after returning home she noticed that the brusing on her chest wasn't healing, in fact as each day passed it hurt more and more. She went to see her doctor and he told her to have a mamogram, and so she did. They found a mass and decided to biopsy the mass. Test results came back malignant. My dad and she returned that day to tell us the bad news and to tell us what is being done to fix things. I at the time was a freshman in college, my brother, an eighth grader.
The following week she started chemotherapy, had had it for 6 months. The did surgery and removed it. The tumor was originally the size of a large lemon, and after chemo the tumor was about the size of a grape. They had cured her and to make sure that things would stay healthy they told her that she needed to go to radiation, just to make sure that they got everything. She went to Siteman Cancer Institute in St. Louis and had 36 radiation treatments, and an aditional one that she called the "boost".
My mom was in remission for about a year and a half when she noticed that there was a spot on her neck that was growing. Eventually she could no longer wear her favorite neclaces. She went and had it looked at and with her history they ordered a round of imaging tests and another biospy. Sure enough, she was sick again. This time it was classified Stage 4, terminal. This time when it came back, it came back in 5 different places in her body, liver, lungs, stomach, adrenal gland, and a hernia that she developed as a child. All hope was not lost, in fact they thougtht that her chances of survival were tremendious.
She was enrolled into a study and was in that for about 6 months, until the study no longer worked for her cancer anymore. They put her on a detox to make sure that all of the drugs from the study were out of her system before they started another round of chemom, this time with a different set of drugs. She went on a trip with my brother and the band from high school to Washington DC. When she came back she was so worn out that she took a week off of work and in that time she started to bloat around the stomach. Eventually she looked like she was 9 months pregnant and was taken into the hospital to see what was going on. She was admitted into the hospital for a weekend, suffering from renal failure, sclerosis of the liver, kidney failure and retaining of water. She had a small chance of surviving the weekend and against all odds, she did.
I got home from Kansas July 29. I finally got to see my mother and family again after three months. I was, on the inside itching to come home. My mother wouldn't let me. We took her the ER at BJC because the morning of July 30 she woke up and her eyes were yellow. August 1 They scheduled her for surgery to put a system of tubes in her stomach to pull off the fluid that was sitting there and told her that she only had about 2 weeks to 2 months to live. We were all devistated. How could things have gotten so bad so fast? We worked with the hospital to get her into hospice and got a hospital bed to our home. She was in surgery and brought home on August 2. I told her that I would take the semester off of school to take care of her, but I wouldn't do it unless she would let me. She said as long as I go back, that she gave her blessing. So I did. I took care of her for 6 days before she passed away.
In the hospital they took another round images of her body and found that the cancer had spread through out her entire body. including the lining of abdomen. She is now just another statistic to the rest of the world, but to me and my family she is the best thing that happened to us. The world's greatest mother.
I invite you to share your story with me. If you or someone you know has been touched by breast cancer, please share there story!
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