Sue Smith is the host of Homerun on CBC Radio One. In December, her mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer that has spread to her brain and elsewhere in her body.

When someone you love gets sick, everything stops. In one instant your world changes from juggling a million different things to a laser-like focus on just one thing, one person.

Literally hours and days just sitting and stroking her hand, refreshing the water on the cloth on her head, listening to the beep beep beep of the monitors, looking for signs that everything is going to be alright.

But gradually the world returns. Only it’s a different world.

Instead of work and your house and your kids and your friends, it’s ICU and tests and doctors and nurses. You live at the hospital and become familiar with the routines. What time do the shifts change, when does that nice lady bring the meals, when is a good time to take a walk? It’s Thursday, the physio comes today! And of course waiting for the doctor — will he come before his surgeries or later tonight? Will he have the results?

This became our entire world and Mum’s corner room at the Neuro became our home for the several weeks that Mum was in the hospital.

And then there is “Transport World” — a world I never really knew existed but for a few weeks become a central part of our lives.

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