During one's lifetime, he or she will face losses that the heart may never fully recover from. People experience these heartbreaking events, or become one themselves. During my own life, I faced multiple times where my mental, emotional, and physical strength were put to the test. The most recent would be my mother, who has been in and out of the hospital, and has now become one of its inhabitants.

My mother, a woman with a heart of gold and a smile with rays of sunshine, has been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. This disease has taken a great physical toll on my mother, who is struggling to keep her memory in tact and is in constant pain. My mother, Paulina, is always tired, the medication upon medication clearly taking hold. This makes her tired and stressed, but does this medicine help with the pain?

No, it does not.

The symptoms continued to get worse. My mother gained weight and her moods swung more than a child in a playground. Her smile turning into a frown as though gravity itself had played a role. When my family thought that this would be the worst of it, we were proven wrong.

My mother could no longer walk correctly. One leg outgrowing the other in width, we could tell something was wrong. The leg turned into a royal purple while the other grew paler. "Walter," my mother called out to my father. "I need to go to the hospital."

My father moved with a quickness, Hermes himself jealous of my father's swiftness. They spent hours in Christ Hospital. My dear mother had blood clotting inside of her.

Today, she went through surgery, but not before telling me that she may have cancer.

During this time (about a year or more, now), I have been trying my best to provide for my family. I started working in the summer of 2017 with hopes of not only saving up for college expenses, but for medical expenses as well. Being one of ten people in one household, and with six of those people being my younger siblings, it was becoming increasingly harder for my father to keep up with the bills. My mother has not been working for years, but recently, the expenses attached to her have been increasing, each sneeze and wheeze becoming a scare. I have been paying for her medication and paying for our family's food. I have been babysitting so that my father could go visit my mother in the hospital. My siblings have been worried, the babies crying for the love of their mother. I tell them that it is all going to be okay, that everything will be fine. I did not even tell them about the surgery my mother had today--- this would have broken their hearts and spirits completely.

I have been trying my best to not only be a good daughter for my parents, but a good big sister to my siblings as well. Being the oldest of seven children is hard enough as it is, but to be the oldest of seven children and have a mother who is constantly in a battle is even harder. I see her wake up every morning, only an hour of rest gifted to her. Her appetite gone, she no longer eats the way she used to. The hyper, burger-loving mommy was brought down to one knee, although she does her best to keep the other strong.

If my mother can keep fighting, then so can I. She made our family stronger, and I hope to keep that going for us. I visited her last night, and as much as I wished I did not see this sight, she had tears in her eyes. Mommy was scared, and, honestly, so was I.