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I often daydream that my mom is still here and living cancer free. I like to imagine her teaching art at a prestigious private school in New York City, or maybe retired quilting in a little cottage in Vermont, or at home sketching on her back porch watching her dog playing in the yard. My mother battled cancer for over 20 years; and I find myself wondering what would it have been like to grow up without living under the shadow of the “c” word. How would things have been different? Would my mom still have been the fierce, strong, and passionate woman I remember? She never allowed herself to be a cancer patient. She was a mother, an artist, a friend, a teacher, and a cancer warrior. My mother was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer in July of 1991. I was 7 years old and my younger sister was 2. She found a pea-sized lump in her left breast by self examination. Her treatment was to be a lumpectomy and radiation. While in surgery, they found numerous lumps in her left breast as well as her right breast and lymph nodes. My father had to make the decision for a radical mastectomy of her left breast and a partial of her right. It was very hard to see her going through all of it. I can remember having to spend a lot of time overnight with friends and family. There was a lot of crying and adults whispering. My mom was in bed most of the time and I remember waking up at night to her vomiting. At 7 years old, I knew words like mastectomy and chemotherapy. One night I couldn’t sleep and I went up stairs to ask my mom if she was dying. How do you answer that? My pediatrician told my mother to give me a journal so I could draw and write my thoughts and emotions. In the afternoons, the two of us would write in our journals. She kept my composition notebook filled with funny round people and lots of “x”s over my mommy’s “bueb”.
I often daydream that my mom is still here and living cancer free. I like to imagine her teaching art at a prestigious private school in New York City, or maybe retired quilting in a little cottage in Vermont, or at home sketching on her back porch watching her dog playing in the yard. My mother battled cancer for over 20 years; and I find myself wondering what would it have been like to grow up without living under the shadow of the “c” word. How would things have been different? Would my mom still have been the fierce, strong, and passionate woman I remember? She never allowed herself to be a cancer patient. She was a mother, an artist, a friend, a teacher, and a cancer warrior. My mother was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer in July of 1991. I was 7 years old and my younger sister was 2. She found a pea-sized lump in her left breast by self examination. Her treatment was to be a lumpectomy and radiation. While in surgery, they found numerous lumps in her left breast as well as her right breast and lymph nodes. My father had to make the decision for a radical mastectomy of her left breast and a partial of her right. It was very hard to see her going through all of it. I can remember having to spend a lot of time overnight with friends and family. There was a lot of crying and adults whispering. My mom was in bed most of the time and I remember waking up at night to her vomiting. At 7 years old, I knew words like mastectomy and chemotherapy. One night I couldn’t sleep and I went up stairs to ask my mom if she was dying. How do you answer that? My pediatrician told my mother to give me a journal so I could draw and write my thoughts and emotions. In the afternoons, the two of us would write in our journals. She kept my composition notebook filled with funny round people and lots of “x”s over my mommy’s “bueb”.
I often daydream that my mom is still here and living cancer free. I like to imagine her teaching art at a prestigious private school in New York City, or maybe retired quilting in a little cottage in Vermont, or at home sketching on her back porch watching her dog playing in the yard. My mother battled cancer for over 20 years; and I find myself wondering what would it have been like to grow up without living under the shadow of the “c” word. How would things have been different? Would my mom still have been the fierce, strong, and passionate woman I remember? She never allowed herself to be a cancer patient. She was a mother, an artist, a friend, a teacher, and a cancer warrior. My mother was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer in July of 1991. I was 7 years old and my younger sister was 2. She found a pea-sized lump in her left breast by self examination. Her treatment was to be a lumpectomy and radiation. While in surgery, they found numerous lumps in her left breast as well as her right breast and lymph nodes. My father had to make the decision for a radical mastectomy of her left breast and a partial of her right. It was very hard to see her going through all of it. I can remember having to spend a lot of time overnight with friends and family. There was a lot of crying and adults whispering. My mom was in bed most of the time and I remember waking up at night to her vomiting. At 7 years old, I knew words like mastectomy and chemotherapy. One night I couldn’t sleep and I went up stairs to ask my mom if she was dying. How do you answer that? My pediatrician told my mother to give me a journal so I could draw and write my thoughts and emotions. In the afternoons, the two of us would write in our journals. She kept my composition notebook filled with funny round people and lots of “x”s over my mommy’s “bueb”.