What it was like to watch my mom survive cancer

I can remember it like it was yesterday. It was July 14^th and I was a bored nine year old confused as to why my mom wasn’t home to take me to the pool. She is an elementary art teacher, so summers were our time to go to the pool, grill hot dogs, and burgers for dinner and stay up late all the time. My dad told me she was getting tests done on her knees, which made sense because they were always giving out on her and to this day she still needs knee replacement surgery. Except that was a lie and what he couldn’t tell me was that my mom was in her final stage of getting tested for breast cancer.

When she came home I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what. She asked me to rally up all four of my older brothers to the living room and I thought, ‘why are we getting in trouble, we haven’t even fought all day?’

I knew what cancer was even then because my brother’s best friend had been battling it on and off for years and our family friend, who was two years younger than me, was in the midst of fighting brain cancer. There were two things I knew for sure, it made you go bald and it could possibly kill you. The next year and a half of my life aged me about ten years and gave me an appreciation for life most nine-year-olds only get in a situation where they become the kid of a sick parent or sibling.

My mom, who is cancer free and currently kicking it in the world like a total bad-ass, demonstrated strength, perseverance and a positive attitude like I have never seen in my entire life. During chemotherapy, she continued to go to work and only took off the day of and after her treatment. She made so many jokes that some days I really believed that cancer didn’t deserve our fears because it wasn’t even that serious…except it was.

There were times when I didn’t recognize my mom and when there was a bone cancer scare that motivated her to say something that haunted me in Mr. Mac’s fourth-grade class every day for the rest of the year. “I might not see Daddy walk you down the aisle.” I didn’t even cry or flinch but I looked at her and realized the severity of what could happen. I made a vow that moment to forever try and be the best version of myself humanly possible, if only because I needed to make my mom proud. It was a moment that motivated me for the rest of my life.

Every once in a while there would be a gift, big or small, on my mom’s chair in the living room. Sometimes it was a new CD and sometimes it was a piece of jewelry that brought her to tears, but each time she smiled and said: “the cancer fairy came.” That’s right, my dad proudly accepted the position of being the cancer fairy and he was pretty good at it. Never once did I see my dad be anything but brave and hopeful and no matter what he may have actually been feeling, I never caught a glimpse of it. He taught me the true meaning of keeping a poker face simply by demonstrating strength for his family.

Looking back now I can understand why my mom losing her hair was the hardest part for me to deal with, but when I think about it I feel that guilt that still resides in the pit of your gut when you think of something from your past that you know you shouldn’t have done. It’s because I would get embarrassed. One time she came to pick me up early from school and when she walked into my class without her wig on, I heard someone whisper ‘why is Casey’s mom bald?’ I have never grabbed my backpack and darted out of a classroom so quickly in my entire life. She hated her wig and she said it was itchy and made her feel uncomfortable, but I hated when people stared.

If my mom was only accepting the idea that she would beat cancer, then why did strangers look at my family with so much pity that it was like they were seeing five children who would soon be without a mom? It scared me and confused me so I would beg her to wear the wig she so passionately hated. I didn’t want people to know she was sick and to this day, I wish I had the attitude I do about people and what their opinions mean to me now. However, I was also nine and I do try and allow myself some leeway.

I didn’t know how heavily that year and a half would impact me for the rest of my life. Then again, I didn’t know how unnatural it was to be one of the caretakers for your mom at nine years old. I didn’t realize that I only got a surprise birthday party because on my actual tenth birthday, my mom was suffering from the side effects of chemo and I kind of got lost in the shuffle. During the time your loved one has cancer, all you can think about is them coming out alive. The after effects don’t hit you until…after.

What I came to understand more than anything is that the illness of a loved one affects everyone differently. My oldest brother was in college at the time, I was the only one still in elementary school, and the three middle boys were in middle school and high school. My dad and the four of us experienced it so differently because of our ages and where we were at in life and that’s okay.

People don’t tell you that you will never take your health, or a bad hair day, for granted again, even if you weren’t the patient. They also don’t explain that the treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation will forever continue to take tolls on the patient in subtle, but extremely difficult ways. On a daily basis, there are symptoms and side effects, my mom, faces because of the radiation, but I’ve never heard her once complain.

“Don’t take my happy cells,” is a phrase that is now used in my household as a way of not tolerating any bullshit in the world. When my mom had cancer, she explained to me that there were a lot of bad cells in her body and she only had a number of ‘happy cells’ left so she had to be wise about them. She couldn’t let negative thoughts, negative people or bad situations take away her happy cells when cancer was already doing that. To this day, everyone in my family carries this idea. That there are so many things we can’t control, but if you have a say in who or what makes you happy, then dammit make your voice loud and clear because there might be a day when you can’t.