I originally wrote this piece a couple of years ago for my amazing friend Sheila as part of her Chicago Now Blog, Mary Tyler Mom.
Sheila is a cancer mom herself and every year, she fills the entire month of September (childhood cancer awareness month) with our stories. It’s a season that is not for the faint of heart, but then again, this is a life that is not for the faint of heart.
I know there are so many of you wonderful parents who identify with one or another of these things that have long made for extraordinary living. God bless.
I so look forward to knowing the purpose in the suffering.
In the meantime… Moment by moment.
I’m a cancer mom.
There are fourteen months of “there’s less than 20% chance”-beating treatment, over one hundred inpatient days, as many outpatient days, ER runs, ever so many blood and platelet transfusions, nine chemo therapy drugs, multiple surgeries, and endless procedures and tests saying that I’m a cancer mom.
But what does that mean to me? Just this…
It means being wakened in the night by nightmares and then realizing it really did happen…I really did hear “There’s a large mass” pronounced over the ER bed of my 2-year old and there’s been no waking up ever since.
It means absorbing the sad looks and conciliatory touches to the shoulder and wanting to shout that we aren’t at a funeral yet.
It means “normal” defines any trip made to the hospital with myself behind the wheel instead of five-point harness-strapped into the back of a speeding sirens-and-lights ambulance while assuring him it’s going to be okay.
It means handing out candy at the door and seeing the looks on the costumed faces as they take in the too white, scarred, bald child at my side and ask their parents what he’s supposed to be while the embarrassed adults avert their eyes and move quickly away.
It means “fixing dinner” is preparing an 18-hour IV bag of nutrition and hydration and then attaching it to a tube in his chest.
It means watching a chemo being carried into the room…a chemo so light sensitive that it must be protected in a dark bag…and then they hang it and pump it into my baby.
It means being the grown up and saying; “You need to take your medicine even though it’s yucky.” to a red, tear-stained face when I want to sit down and cry right along with him.
It means listening to him whisper “I’m so brave” over and over as the medicine lulls him into a stupor and I hand him off to sets of surgical masks and scrubbed arms, knowing he’s going into the operating room and I can’t go with him.
It means that while other kids his age are learning to ride a two-wheel bike, I take joy in his remembering a words or learning to jump with both feet at the same time because in his world, that’s a really, really big deal.
It means there’s a kit in my purse that has gloves, alcohol swabs, clamps, and everything I need for a child with a central line and I carry it everywhere he goes….just in case.
It’s being up and out at 2:30AM, not for a party, but for an ER run in which I find myself praying that the fever goes down and the blood pressure goes up and that we can just be admitted to the regular oncology floor and not the ICU.
It’s learning to walk, and even at times run next to a child attached to tubes because playing makes them feel better.
It’s accepting the part of the living child forever lost to the moment his brain was open on an OR table and loving the living child he is today.
It’s feeling like I can’t breathe until I get answers and then they have none and I somehow go on breathing.
It’s allowing the child I swore to protect to go through intense seasons of pain, heartache and potentially life-long damage in order to try and save him.
It’s sitting by a hospital bed; a hundred percent powerless to fix anything and praying for the day the chemo stops hurting his skin enough that he’ll be comforted by a mother’s touch once again.
It’s holding him close next to the Christmas tree and answering “Mommy, will you hold me close so the death won’t get me?” without completely losing it.
It’s hearing that after almost two years of clear scans, there’s something growing and nobody knows what it is and the best thing to do is to wait and check again in six weeks and I find myself agreeing over the sound of my heart ripping open.
It’s knowing we’re out of options to cure his diagnosis and still getting up in the morning.
It’s coming to peace with the understanding that what I do may never change an outcome or what’s ahead for my darling son…and then finding the strength and purpose to make the most of every second of every day anyway.
This is what it means for me.
I’m a cancer mom.
