Pink for October

I can remember the day my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer (for the second time) like it was just yesterday. It was a school day, and my Mom and Dad had us all get together in their room. I basically thought it was just a general discussion about something, but then I heard the phrase, “I just want you to know that I love you all, but I might not win against this.”

Those were the words coming from my Mom’s mouth, and I couldn’t completely understand them until a few years later. But I soon knew exactly what it meant when saw her taking medicine every morning and night, as well as going to something called “chemo,” which I didn’t understand completely at the time either.

Going to chemotherapy once or twice a week was a regular thing, and my Dad would usually take my Mom. Regardless of them fighting and arguing, I knew they still cared about each other, and that even though words will never be forgotten, you must forgive to move on. “Forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting,” is something my friend Michelle told me about a different situation, but thinking back to this, it just feels like it applied. These trips were generally two hours long and in the direction of Philadelphia to Fox Chase Cancer Center.

After seven or so years of fighting breast cancer, I came home from school (in 7th grade), and found my Mom was close to passing. She had always told us that she kept fighting for us, but the fight was over. She was physically too weak to do anything else, but she gave it everything she had, so we could see her when we got home. I don’t think I ever felt as bad as I did that moment. I felt like somebody had ripped out every organ I needed to survive, and destroyed them in front of me. The tears just rushed down my face. I ran up to my room, and brought down a stuffed animal I had received for a prior birthday from my Mom, and I placed it with her. It had a heart on it, and though she wouldn’t, or rather couldn’t say anything to me in response, I knew she cherished it. It was a few moments after that, that she passed away.

I couldn’t take it. I ran up to my room, and I cried there for about another hour. Then when people left, I went back to my room and cried the rest of the night. I went to the funeral a few days after, and didn’t cry once, because I knew my Mom wouldn’t want us to be sad that she perished, but happy that she was beginning a new life, journey, or something of the like that comes after death.

To this day, it still brings sadness to my heart when I think about her, because I can walk into the room it occured in, and see things as they happened; feel things as they were; and think thoughts that were running through my head. That’s why I have such a strong opinion about breast cancer awareness; I simply do not feel people should pass off getting breast cancer as having the same odds as going to a super bowl two years in a row.

Perhaps learning about breast cancer gives us a better knowledge with situations like these, but living in a world where it happens to someone close to you, or to people all around you, now that is what gives you the motivation to help with efforts like these…

I can remember the day my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer (for the second time) like it was just yesterday. It was a school day, and my Mom and Dad had us all get together in their room. I basically thought it was just a general discussion about something, but then I heard the phrase, “I just want you to know that I love you all, but I might not win against this.”

Those were the words coming from my Mom’s mouth, and I couldn’t completely understand them until a few years later. But I soon knew exactly what it meant when saw her taking medicine every morning and night, as well as going to something called “chemo,” which I didn’t understand completely at the time either.

Going to chemotherapy once or twice a week was a regular thing, and my Dad would usually take my Mom. Regardless of them fighting and arguing, I knew they still cared about each other, and that even though words will never be forgotten, you must forgive to move on. “Forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting,” is something my friend Michelle told me about a different situation, but thinking back to this, it just feels like it applied. These trips were generally two hours long and in the direction of Philadelphia to Fox Chase Cancer Center.

After seven or so years of fighting breast cancer, I came home from school (in 7th grade), and found my Mom was close to passing. She had always told us that she kept fighting for us, but the fight was over. She was physically too weak to do anything else, but she gave it everything she had, so we could see her when we got home. I don’t think I ever felt as bad as I did that moment. I felt like somebody had ripped out every organ I needed to survive, and destroyed them in front of me. The tears just rushed down my face. I ran up to my room, and brought down a stuffed animal I had received for a prior birthday from my Mom, and I placed it with her. It had a heart on it, and though she wouldn’t, or rather couldn’t say anything to me in response, I knew she cherished it. It was a few moments after that, that she passed away.

I couldn’t take it. I ran up to my room, and I cried there for about another hour. Then when people left, I went back to my room and cried the rest of the night. I went to the funeral a few days after, and didn’t cry once, because I knew my Mom wouldn’t want us to be sad that she perished, but happy that she was beginning a new life, journey, or something of the like that comes after death.

To this day, it still brings sadness to my heart when I think about her, because I can walk into the room it occured in, and see things as they happened; feel things as they were; and think thoughts that were running through my head. That’s why I have such a strong opinion about breast cancer awareness; I simply do not feel people should pass off getting breast cancer as having the same odds as going to a super bowl two years in a row.

Perhaps learning about breast cancer gives us a better knowledge with situations like these, but living in a world where it happens to someone close to you, or to people all around you, now that is what gives you the motivation to help with efforts like these…

One year, seven months and 3 days ago I sat in a small room in an NHS hospital and heard the words “I’m sorry, it isn’t good news, it is cancer.”

This was two weeks before my 28^th birthday. I sat and I stared at a metal cupboard in the corner and I thought “Goodness me, I hope I wake up soon because this is the worst nightmare I’ve ever had. This can’t be true because I. could. not. cope. with this.” But then, it was true and so I said “Well, that’s a bit of a bugger, isn’t it?”

So, from that point the journey went on: through AC and Taxotere chemotherapy, through “febrile neutropaenic sepsis” with IV antibiotics and a 5 day stay in isolation, through a portocath insertion that initially refused to work, through a mastectomy, extensive ‘jollying’ physiotherapy, through radiotherapy, Tamoxifen and Zoladex. Through uncertainty, fear, pain, tears (alright, hysterics) and depression, the journey wended its way. Wound its way through to a day one year and 18 days ago when I came round from anaesthesia knowing (hoping) that along with my breast, the cancer had gone.

The two, interlinked – something I loved with something I hated; something safe with something deadly; something that was part of me with a thing that was invading me without pity.

I spent the intervening time – six months – trying to assimilate what it meant to have cancer; trying to learn how to be someone with cancer. Someone with no hair, no eyelashes, no eyebrows; someone who could barely walk round the block; someone whose collection of medications made them look like a pharmacy – or a drugdealer (anyone for domperidone? I have enough to last a lifetime but, sadly, they didn’t work for me!); someone living with a lump that was trying to kill them.

And then, (now), then(now) it was(is) gone and I had(I’m having) to learn that too – how to be a person without cancer, how to be a person who *had* cancer. Do I still have cancer? They tell me I don’t, but how do they know? How can they know that there isn’t a small cell lurking somewhere in me, just biding its time? In four years – if the cancer doesn’t come back in the meantime – I’ll “officially” have beaten it. My risk will be no greater than anyone else’s. How will I feel then?

My fear is that I’ll never believe it’s gone and will live the rest of my life with a mental scar as prominent as my physical scar.

—embrook