I've learned something about cancer this year. I thought all cancers were kinda alike. It turns out that some grow slowly, or are more capable of treatment than others.
After Christmas, my mother, Bertie Carter felt tired and listless--- even to the point of not being terribly clear-headed. When my father and sister finally talked her into going to the ER, they kept her and gave her five pints of blood for anemia. It turns out that her hospital visit led to tests which led to a visit to the cancer treatment center in Muskogee, where capable Dr. Vasseraddi (sp.) told us, "She has acute, or fast-growing, myopathic leukemia. Statistically, the 10 to 15% who do live five years out from a diagnosis, are not those who are 72 years of age. There is treatment-- chemo-- but it would not be successful for you." The next week, we embarked on Nana's first week of dacogen. She had four hour-long IV injections of it, but on Friday there came an ice storm and everyone was snowed in. By Monday's treatment time, she had passed.
So many people have expressed their regards and offered to assist us in this time. I speak for all of us in saying that we have felt the loving bond with so many friends and family over these few days since Monday, February 1 when she passed.
It has been a journey of less than three weeks, but a very hard one. Words can't encompass how capable, funny, sweet, beautiful, compassionate, tirelessly energetic, creative, patient and clever my mom was. She left behind two girls with advanced degrees, 2 at OU, one with an NSU degree and a grandson who loved her very much.
She got to know her first great-grandchild for a bit over one month before passing. This pic is from November at El Zarape, where she always ordered the chicken lime soup.
The last night, Sunday January 31st was a turning point for her. I had called her before bedtime and our plan was that I'd drive her to chemo in Muskogee in my truck with four-wheel drive, since snow and ice were still packing some of the streets, highways and bridges. "OK, Sugar-Babe. I'll see you at 9:30. Love you," she said. We've never been shy about saying we love each other. My father went to bed early with her. At 1:30 he noticed she was gone, and found that she had gone to the other bed but was breathing shallow, perspiring and ill. He stayed awake concerned, but she fought him to keep him from calling an ambulance. At dawn, he called my sister who came over and called them over Nana's protests.
She was frail but polite going to the stretcher, and thanked the medics. On the way, her blood pressure bottomed and she was resuscitated-- and again after arriving at the hospital. She had tubes everywhere when I went in to see her. The doctor had braced me for it. Her heart flatlined as my sister and I sat holding her hand and kissing her forehead. Now she could be free of the pumps and beeping machines, the painful pricks and the aches and stinging. She could be beautiful again and free.
When I think of her, my favorite (recurring) image is of a coifed 60s mom, age 30-something in pink lipstick wearing a shorts set and holding a trowel from having just planted roses. She wrote all over her final instructions "Closed casket, please." And that was so others could remember her from better times.
In our family, we're not weepy nor regretful nor angry. My little sister says it like this: "We just put on our Big Girl Panties and deal with it." We know Nana is over the pain. At the memorial, Dennis sang, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I like to think of her as a flitty little sparrow, who has flown away because she has important sparrow business to take care of, and she has done her best to give us the tools in life to carry on with things earthly. She was never just ours anyway--- she belonged to NSU, to the Hospital Board, the town's Planning and Zoning Commission, the sick, the elders, the children, the teens who needed chiffon-dreamy gowns for Prom, the mentees, the exchange students, the pastor's crew, the pitch players and domino players and golfers and History Day students, the intern teachers and the local beauty pageants and fashion shows, the renters and grandchildren. The pastor remarked that her accomplishments were so great that the Energizer Bunny would be giving up and waving a white flag in concession to her.
Bertie Kirk Carter was b. February 6, 1937 at Braggs Oklahoma. She attended school at Stone Chapel, Boudinot, and Bagley, and perhaps other places. In 1955 she married Eugene Clinton Carter at the home of Reverend Krouse at or near Welling. They made their home in Tahlequah, having built a house in Boone Addition. Then they built a house in Monks Addition at 601 Victor Street. They had two daughters, Kathy Jean Carter and Karen Jane Carter. She succumbed to Leukemia on Monday, February 1, 2010 just sixteen days after having been diagnosed. Donations to NSU foundation will support scholarships in her honor.
