#i2amru (I, Too, Am Reinhardt) Volume 1 Number 1 | Page 30

The Strength of a Mountain Woman
By Kadie Mullinax
“Mawmaw, won’t you come sit
down and eat? No one else needs
anything,” my aunt Diane protests
from across the kitchen table.
The kitchen table is the spot where
we have celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and almost every
birthday of my entire childhood
life. It’s a special thing when you
think about it--everyone gatheringaround, piling heaps of food onto
their plates without the slightest
notion that they won’t be able to
eat all of that. No way Pawpaw can
eat that much stuffing. Absolutely
impossible.
Then the real problem arises;
Mawmaw once again is saying she’s
not hungry and ascends to the den
where she plugs up her heating
pad, then slowly bends to sit while
attempting to seem her typical “I’m
fine.” The thing is, she’s not fine,
and she’s been far from fine for a
good while.
Pawpaw has had it. For probably
the hundredth time, he exclaims,
“Minalee, you are going to the
doctor now, and I mean it. This has
went on long enough.”
Days go by, and of course no doctor
visits for Mawmaw, because whether Pawpaw will admit it or not, she
is more hard-headed than he is.

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Minalee Mullinax finally caves after
a long night of going to the bathroom and seeing for herself that
blood in her stool has rendered a
need to seek help.

He is choked up,
trying to speak
to us through a
closed up throat,
fogged mind, and
broken heart.
We get the call from Dad later that
day, “Mawmaw has a tumor in her
colon. We don’t know details yet.
They are running more tests now.”
He is choked up, trying to speak
to us through a closed up throat,
fogged mind, and broken heart. A
little bit of me falls as I hear him
speak the words about my grandma
Mullinax.
The closest thing I’ve ever seen to
invincible would have to be that
woman with the crow’s feet wrinkles in the corners of her eyes.
No amount of spilled milk, no
mountain is too high for the lady
that has kept my family glued together.

More details unfold: “The tumor is
the size of a grapefruit,” “Yes, it is
cancerous,” “We will do our very
best to remove it and get it all, but
I’m afraid you will still have to have
some Chemo treatment afterward.”
Up until this moment, I realize, I
have been unaware of the true size
of a grapefruit. I have indulged in
this fruit before, selecting one at
the grocery store and coming home
to slice it open. Yet now I want to
know the precise size, on average.
The internet tells me that it ranges
in diameter from 10–15 cm.
Surgery is scheduled, and our
journey to St. Joseph has been
approaching with record time. The
day finally arrives to hand Mawmaw over to the doctors that will
extract this awful grapefruit tumor
growing inside of her.
I have spent countless days with
her up to this point, sitting outside
on her back porch drinking lemonade and just rocking while the
sun painted surreal colors across
the sky. We’ve talked about everything but her tumor, and then one
day she turned to me and said,
“I’m scared and I know all of you
are, too, but I feel the prayers of so
many, so I believe it’s going to be
alright.”

I hold onto those words while we
wait in the lobby of the spotless
hospital, known for its remarkable
research and ability to save lives.
Selfish as it seems, all I can think in
that space and time is “God, please
save my Mawmaw.”
My mom, knowing me better than
I know myself, can sense my worrying, and she persuades me to
go with her to the gift shop to get
Mawmaw something to wake up to
after surgery. When we come back,
it is only a few minutes before the
doctor appears in the doorway and
announces that my grandma has
indeed made it through like the
fighter she is.
“We were able to get it all, and miraculously the tumor was attached
to only two lymph nodes,” the doctor says with great relief. He goes
on to tell us it’s truly amazing that a
tumor that size had not attached to
more parts and spread, and that she
is one of the lucky ones. Before he
can finish his sentence, I think, “not
luck, but prayer--thank you, God!”

Mawmaw has gone as far as she
can bear. She is put in the hospital
this week, and my dad is the first to
approach the doctor in the hallway
with, “I do not think my mother
can take anymore, sir.”

Glamour shot of Minalee
Mullinax in her younger
days.

Swift instructions come that
Mawmaw is finished with Chemo
treatment. It is over. It is time to go
home and rest.

The road to recovery is long and
challenging. Mawmaw has been
scheduled for Chemo every other
week for twelve months--one week
on, one week off. At first she was
feeling good, and my dad would
say, “She’s taking it like a champ.”
Months have rolled on as we have
stood by and witnessed this woman, who has always been stronger
than all of us combined, crumble
under the poison of treatment.
Every week that she would
be off, she would start to feel
better right around the time
the next week approached, and
then it would be back to the
doctor. It became a cycle of
menacing cruelty, and I longed
for the end to near.
Her eyes have become sunken
in, her body movements have
slowed to an almost stop, and
it is the next to last week of
scheduled treatment.

My Mawmaw and me at her great-grandson Joseph’s
baseball game, at which she was recognized alongside
other cancer survivors .

Back to the porch we go: rocking,
sipping our lemonade, and marveling over the North Georgia
Mountains that spread out behind
my grandparents’ house. Minalee is
tired. I can see it in her eyes and in
her shoulders, the way they slump
simply because she lacks the energy
to hold them up. All she will say is,
“I’m better now, and to God be the
glory of it all.”
To date, Minalee Mullinax has
received all clear scans, and no
sign of the cancer has returned.
However, if you or a loved one has
encountered this terrible disease,
you know that it has no boundaries
or no respect for a person. Colon
cancer is the third most commonly
diagnosed cancer and the second
leading cause of cancer death in
men and women combined in
the U.S. The Colon Cancer Alliance, the American Cancer Society, and St. Jude are all places to
which you can donate and support
the efforts of finding a cure that
will defeat this terrible disease.

“I’m better now,
and to God be
the glory of it all.”

(Photos courtesy of Kadie Mullinax)
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