Saturday, August 19, 2006

Cancer-Dealers

Here's the thing about the lump (which, for some unnamed reason, I'd rather call a bump): I knew I had to keep it a secret. That's why it was so important to write about it here--because no one in my family could know but I needed to let it out somewhere.

No one who had to personally deal with my mother could know. Until I couldn't tell them something, I didn't realize how much I'd come to depend on each of them in the last year and a half. I confided in all of them different things, and if you added my family members all together, you came up with one complete best friend.

But I also knew that each of them just couldn't go through with me what I had to go through right now. All of them had lived through three major recurrences of my mother's own cancer. Each of them had come to terms with what it meant to lose my mother. Each had come to terms with the idea that maybe they didn't have to. Each was told no, the hope had been wrong. The cancer would kill her in a year. Each had heard that death sentence from many different doctors, the best in the field. So each came to terms again with the idea that she'd die. Soon. (When you're talking about the rest of someone's life, a year is soon.)

Each heard that she was in remission--remission--a word we never, never, ever expected to hear. A miracle, the doctors said. No one, especially my mom, could believe it was true. They must have gotten her files mixed up with some other patient's. She wasn't supposed to have remission. She was supposed to die.

It didn't last. By fall--9 months after our lives as cancer-dealers started--she had it again. Surgery. They removed the new lesions. 6 more months, they said. She was in remission again--a word I now recognize for its truly fickle optimism. 10 months this time, then cancer again. Surgery again. Out in time for the once-a-year family reunion.

Now who knows? 6? 9? 10 months? We'll take it, whatever it is, but it leaves a bitter taste in our throats, this new remission, because we know what is around the corner at the end of this latest purgatory, even if we don't know how far down the road this corner might be.

* * *

How could I enter into this precarious set of peaks and valleys that is my family's life the idea that I might--might--also have cancer? I couldn't. Not yet.

So I began to play a game in my head. When would I tell them? Not now, when I hadn't even confirmed if there was reason to be concerned. What about if they decided to do a mammogram? No. What about if they saw something on it and decided to do a biopsy? No. What if the biopsy was positive and we needed to consider treatment options?

. . . Probably not. If I had a mastectomy? Well, I couldn't hide that. But probably the best thing to do would be to wait. Tell them after when things would be done, when things would be okay or not okay but when I'd know, or when they'd know.

I understand now, see. I know what it is to worry, to await each test, each doctor's visit, each surgery. I know what it is to measure your life in hospital visits. It's horrible enough to undergo that waiting for one you love. To undergo that for two you love? Unbearable. I mean it. Just . . . unbearable.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're incredibly brave, T. Know that you aren't going through this alone...we're here holding your hand come-what-may.

Kay Richardson said...

Yes. Kay's always here. Chin up and everything.

dan said...

Tell them what you find out. When you find it out.

How would you have felt if your mom hid it from you until she couldn't anymore?

You don't have to over-involve them before you know what it is that you actually have to say. On the other hand, they would want to be there for you if you needed it.

Best of luck and much love.

Tina said...

For anyone reading this after the fact, I had a mammogram but it came back fine. I was a-ok. Lucky.