Chicken Soup for the Breast Cancer Survivor's Soul, Page 3

  “What happened?”

  “I woke up one morning and the OTHER side had a lump!”

  My husband’s eyebrows went up two-and-a-half inches. “The other side had a lump?”

  I nodded seriously. “So I knew there was no way around it. I had to go tell my mom that I was dying. Of course, she handled it with all the sensitivity one would expect from their mother during a crisis like that: She laughed, and then explained about what was going on and how it wasn’t unusual for girls’ breast development to start on one side first.”

  Fred rolled his eyes and began massaging his temples.

  “So I figure I probably discombobulated my DNA or something, pounding on myself like that! It’s probably my own fault they’re defective now.” I sighed. “Guess I’ll never know, huh?”

  Fred just shook his head and stared at me for a long minute. Finally, he grinned and said, “I love you. You’re about one raisin short of a fruitcake, but I love you.”

  See what I mean about him?

  So like I said, when people ask, “How did you survive cancer? What’s the one main thing that got you through?” this is what I tell them: “The Beatles definitely knew what they were talking about: ‘All You Need Is Love.’”

  Tina Wagner Mattern

  “It may be the closest in proximity,

  but it’s not the dearest thing to my heart.”

  Reprinted with permission of Jonny Hawkins ©2005.

  Reading Charlotte’s Web

  Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

  Anaïs Nin

  I spent the critical five years following my breast-cancer odyssey inspiring other women. I’d written a book that seemed to move people, and I was invited to speak at luncheons, fundraisers and celebrations all over the country. I’d dress up in my high heels and stockings, my skirts and jackets, wearing the fancy clothes like a shield against the thousands of stories that looked up at me from the audience. You can have my story, I was saying from the stage, but I don’t really want yours in return.

  People would rush up to me after my presentations wanting to tell tales of gloriously long survival or gut-wrenching death. I became expert at tuning the mout. Your sister died? I’m so sorry. Your mother survived? I’m so glad. You’ve just been diagnosed? Hang in there. I’d say the same platitudes over and over again, not connecting, not engaging, not wanting to be part of the masses of women fighting this disease.

  There was only one kind of story that pierced my armor like an arrow. I had been diagnosed when my children were three and six, and the only stories that I really heard during that entire period of time, the only ones that had any true resonance with me, were stories about young mothers who had died. The whole idea of it—how unfair, how terrifying, how harrowing, how awful—made me, the speech-giver, speechless.

  How could anyone bear to die when their children were so young? What, exactly, would you do? How, exactly, would you proceed? My ears became greedy for these details, even though the immediate danger of death was passed for me. I wanted to know, and if anyone was willing to speak, I was ready to hear. I heard stories of young mothers who had written letters to their children before they died, made videos to record their life stories, even secured wives for their husbands. But I never heard exactly what I needed. I never heard exactly what I might do.

  Then one day, I had just finished a speech in front of an audience of nearly one thousand people in Anchorage, Alaska. I made my way through the sea of survivors and was sitting at a table signing books and repeating my mantras . . . I’m so sorry, I’m so glad, hang in there . . . when a woman approached the table and told me her sister had recently died, leaving her to raise two little girls.

  I froze. I had two little girls.

  “What,” I asked, as if it were the most natural thing to say to a stranger, “did your sister do in the end?”

  The woman in front of me smiled. “She read her children Charlotte’s Web.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes and to this woman’s, too. I pictured her sister propped up in bed, her little girls snuggled next to her, the room darkened against the day and the night. I heard her voice— raspy, exhausted, desperate and strong—spinning the tale of love, loyalty and loss, and of the imperative for children to go out into the world and make their way. She sounded wise to me, this ghostly stranger.

  “That,” I said to the sister before me, “is exactly what I would do, too.”

  Jennie Nash

  Locks of Love

  What’s important is finding out what works for you.

  Henry Moore

  The door flung open on the last day of school, and the children spilled out. I turned to begin organizing the books and sorting through papers when I noticed him just outside the door.

  “Mrs. Cano, Mrs. Cano . . . don’t you know me?” For a minute, I panicked. It’s sometimes hard to recognize my former students as adolescents when the last time I’d seen them they were second-graders. How could I not know him?

  “Daniel?” He was taller than I am now. He still wore glasses—and those incredible blue eyes!

  Even as a first-year teacher, I could see he was a unique child. He had thick, long hair, golden and glistening, and his whole world was music. When I made him put away his music composition book during a lesson, Daniel never objected but would merely sigh with the resigned, all-knowing expression of an old man. This child was a genius, but he also had a unique sense of self, which was something I had been struggling with for years. How could I be “teaching” a child like this?

  Daniel’s hair was the ultimate symbol of his individuality. His mother came one day after school to explain that she was trying to get Daniel to agree to a haircut, but he had refused. It wasn’t a defiant, tantrum-like refusal, his mother explained, but one that was grounded in his awareness of who he was. “He said he wouldn’t be Daniel without it,” she continued, and she confessed she just didn’t have the heart to force him.

  That was a year before I discovered the lump in my breast, a lump that progressed into my worst nightmare. I lost a year with the children, missed witnessing their growth and escapades. When I contemplate that year, I think of the endless succession of needles that delivered the poison that prolonged my life and brought me back to the classroom, to the children.

  I lost my hair—all of it. It was humbling to see that alien looking back at me—no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair on her head. I felt invisible.

  A few years later, a classmate of Daniel’s ran up to me on the first day of school. “Mrs. Cano, did you see? Daniel cut his hair!”

  What could have prompted him to relinquish the cherished trademark? I wondered. But he never told anyone why. No one insisted. They only wondered, and after a time, they never mentioned it because he didn’t. He’d let that part of his identity go, but clearly, he was still Daniel.

  Now, here he was, astonishingly grown up. “Just thought I’d come by and say hi,” he said as he surveyed the room. “I remember I used to sit right over there,” he gestured.

  “Well, Daniel,” I began, “now that you’ve graduated from eighth grade, do you have any idea what you want to be?”

  I was startled to hear him say, “I want to be a professional skateboarder.” He hesitated, “Or else study accounting.”

  “But what happened to your music?” I asked.

  He gave the familiar heavy sigh. “I don’t know—maybe I could do something with that, too.”

  It was a short conversation, and too soon, he was gone. Just that morning, I was wondering if the children were retaining anything I taught—not just academics, but other things, such as how to make difficult decisions, understand different perspectives, distinguish between something significant and something that wasn’t. Maybe Daniel’s visit was an answer to these questions.

  Weeks later, I ran into Daniel’s mother at the supermarket. We exchanged niceties, and I told
her how thrilled I felt to see Daniel again. Then I said, “I didn’t think he would EVER cut his hair. I guess he just outgrew the need for it.”

  “Oh,” his mother responded, “didn’t he tell you? It was because of you—he did it because of you. The hair went to the Children’s Cancer Foundation for wigs.”

  Leah Cano

  As previously appeared in

  Mamm Magazine

  2

  SUPPORT

  There is no support so strong as the strength that enables one to stand alone.

  Ellen Glasgow

  He Doesn’t Take “No” for an Answer

  Live life more fully, love more unconditionally and trust in the goodness of life.

  Susan B. Komen Newsletter, Houston,Texas

  A child’s optimism should send a message to us all. My eleven-year-old’s response to my breast-cancer recurrence was more than I could ever have anticipated.

  My children had only known me as a survivor because I had spent six and a half years in remission. I had always feared a relapse, and one of my great concerns was how my children would react and cope if the cancer returned, because now they were old enough to understand so much more.

  In February 2001, I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, with additional disease in my liver and bones. I began extensive chemotherapy treatments, and my physical condition worsened before it stabilized. Living with these changes were my husband and two sons.

  A friend was walking in the Avon three-Day, sixty-Mile Breast Cancer Walk, and Andrew, my eleven-year-old, decided he would hold a fund-raising dance at the local recreation center for sixth-grade students and donate all the proceeds to the walk. He took command of the task and pulled all the details together after he asked my husband to take care of renting the room at the recreation center for the night. Andrew set out to solicit donations, and enlisted the services of a disc jockey and his brother’s band as entertainment. A friend’s mom donated the soda, candies and goodies, and he asked adults to chaperone the party.

  The dance was a great success, and $2,000 was raised. A Boston Globe reporter interviewed him, and an article followed. Soon, donations flowed in from the greater Boston community. One person sent tickets to an NSYNC concert, which were sold to the highest bidder. All this raised another $2,000, also donated to the Avon Fund.

  To date, Andrew has held two more annual dances that raised thousands of dollars for the Memorial Sloane-Kettering and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Breast Cancer Research Centers. He now is the disc jockey for the dances, advertises for the events, places donation boxes at local businesses and has become quite the entrepreneur for charity events.

  Living with cancer has become part of our everyday lives, and as my survival continues, the boys have grown accustomed to my life and live like normal kids. We all understand it is important to live each day—with the emphasis on living, not just surviving. The lessons learned are real, not from video games.

  We all know that life isn’t fair. Some face war and famine; some deal with poverty and crime; others face illness . . . and all of us have to accept our current conditions, fight our battles and look forward with hope for the future.

  Recently, the cancer has progressed to my brain. After a number of stereostatic surgeries, whole and partial brain radiation treatments and continuing chemotherapy, our family continues to fight the battle.

  This spring, Andrew was given the Principal’s Award at the eighth-grade commencement, honored in part for his continuing community service and breast cancer fundraising activities. Of course, we were very proud when the principal said, “He is a leader among his classmates, particularly in service-oriented projects. When he feels passionate about something, Andrew doesn’t take no for an answer.” It was also noted that “he is guided to make the world a better place.”

  He has certainly made my world a better one!

  Ellen B. Leavitt

  Giving and Receiving

  People believe that food cures. Couscous, asparagus, baked chicken, turkey soup, macaroni and cheese, chocolate pudding, cornbread, broiled salmon, lasagna, tacos, strawberry smoothies—all arrived on my doorstep, unbidden, like manna from heaven, during the time I needed wound care.

  They came from women in the neighborhood and women at church, from mothers of Carlyn’s classmates and the director of Emily’s preschool. Sometimes they came four at a time, food piling up as though we were getting ready for a party or an earthquake. Each night, Rob and the girls and I would sit down to complete, hot, precooked meals, and for a few moments, pretend as though life was normal.

  Taking a meal to someone is such a primal act. Even in our microwavable, take-out, drive-through world, it survives, like a flower pushing through the cracks in the cement. People can’t do anything to help the fact that you have cancer in your breast or a wound across your abdomen, but they can drive you to the hospital every morning if you can’t drive yourself, and they can do something about the fact that you will be hungry at the end of the day—and they do.

  At first, I cringed at so much goodwill. I knew some of the mothers had problems of their own, yet they brought me gifts to make my life easier. I felt as if goodwill were a bank account I was depleting, casserole by casserole. How would I ever pay them all back?

  It was Cassi, a twelve-year-old girl, the eldest child in a family with five children, who showed me that payment wasn’t the point.

  Cassi didn’t believe much in the curative power of food. She put her faith in babysitting and volunteered to stay with our children, Carlyn and Emily, while my husband, Rob, and I went to our cancer support groups every Tuesday night for twelve weeks. She folded our girls’ doll clothes, put the picture books back on the bookshelf and helped Carlyn study for her spelling tests—and wouldn’t let us pay her a dime. I tried to be coy and slide the money into her back pocket, but she shook her head and said, “No, thank you. I don’t want to be paid.”

  I took my case to her mother, thinking I was doing a good deed for a kid who wouldn’t stand up for herself. Her mother said, “That’s what we’ve counseled her to say,” and I rearranged my thoughts to see that Cassi was only doing what her parents thought was proper.

  “But that’s not fair to Cassi,” I argued. “She’s giving us a ton of time.”

  “It was her idea,” her father explained, changing the picture in my mind yet again. “She’s been looking for a service project she could really do herself, with her own talents, and you’re it. We’re going to continue to instruct her to refuse your money because we want to support her effort.”

  I glanced at Cassi, who was twisting her hair in the doorway. I thought, I’m a service project? I’m in bad enough shape to be a service project?

  “Think how few chances a twelve-year-old has to serve,” Cassi’s mom explained. But instead of thinking of a twelve-year-old’s reality, I thought of my friend, Lisa, who had recently died, and how much I’d wanted to take enchiladas to her home for her family, and how much I wanted to take her boys to the park, and how I hadn’t been able to do those things for her.

  I promised Cassi I wouldn’t pay her until I felt well again. I didn’t pay her until late February when, instead of a doctor’s appointment or a cancer support group, Rob and I went out for dinner. Only then would she accept money and a card from us, telling her how much she had supported and given to our family.

  Jennie Nash

  Reprinted with permission of Allan Hirsh ©1990.

  Little Man Christopher

  The Child is father to the Man.

  William Wordsworth

  Upon receiving my diagnosis of aggressive breast cancer, my husband, Tony, and I were faced with the challenge of how to deal with the situation without frightening our son, Christopher, who had just turned three. He was already trying to adjust to having a new baby in the house and being a big brother to six-month-old Emily, and he didn’t need any more burdens on his little shoulders.

  We decided not to try and explain
the frightening ordeal we were embarking on, but to go about our business, trying to keep daily life as routine as possible for the sake of the children. This worked to a point, but eventually things like prolonged illness, fatigue and loss of hair gave Christopher the impression that all wasn’t well at our house.

  “Mommy’s very sick,” I finally said to him, after he had noticed I was different. “My body is trying to fight the sickness, and that’s why all my hair fell out. Don’t worry, though . . . when I feel better, it will all grow back.”

  After having said that, I wondered if I had done the right thing. One day, when Christopher had a tummy ache, he asked, “Will my hair come out, too?” And when little Emily had a fever, he expected her hair to come out as well.

  So on we went, through months of chemotherapy. The schedule was the same each time: take the children to school, have a treatment, sleep until they come home, and back to work by Monday. Between treatments, Tony gave me Neupogen injections to keep my white cell count up. This ensured I could have my next treatment without a slip in the schedule.

  I’ll never forget the first time Christopher heard me get sick after a treatment. I thought I was being so discreet, first opening the bedroom door and slipping quietly into the master bathroom, then closing the door behind me and letting loose. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was his little hand rubbing my back oh-so-gently. “It’s okay, Mommy,” he’d say to me.

  After seeing me in such a vulnerable position, he found it difficult to leave my side. Many a night, his daddy carried him to bed after he fell asleep while comforting me. Many a day, we struggled to separate from each other when dropping him off at preschool.

  I’ll always remember and cherish the moment he first discovered my hair was growing back. He came to my room, and a look of wonder came over his face as he caught sight of me. “Are you feeling better today, Mommy?”