Debbie Legault

Mother, grandmother, librarian, military spouse, family life educator, take your pick! Debbie Legault was born in British Columbia, Canada to a former RCAF airman father and a Scottish War Bride mother and has lived in other Canadian provinces, Germany and California. Her latest role is as the author of “Mom...It's Cancer”, the story of supporting her 27-year-old daughter as they experienced breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

In March of 2019, my 27-year-old daughter Adrienne was diagnosed with breast cancer. I moved from my home in California to her home in Ontario, Canada and stayed for almost a year. A year of aggressive treatment that included three surgeries, twenty weeks of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation.

Lots of things happened during that year.

My grandson started school. My youngest daughter moved in with her boyfriend. My oldest daughter went back to work after 18 months of maternity leave. But in conversations with my family and friends, since I came home, I’ve come to realize that I’ve lost all of these moments. I know they happened, but it feels like they happened in someone else’s family.

The things I do remember as if they happened in 2019 actually happened the year before. I think I’ve seen people I love much more recently than I actually have. When my sister-in-law says she misses me I think “It hasn’t been 

long” and then I am gently reminded by my husband that I haven’t seen her for over two years.

Cancer is an all-consuming beast that occupies every waking moment of every single day. From the moment I got that phone call my focus narrowed dangerously to one thing and one thing only…wanting my child to live.

My entire being was occupied doing all I could to make that happen. At times, I was a drill sergeant making sure she did the exercises after surgery so she wouldn’t lose the full use of her arm. At times, I was a masseuse rubbing her body parts that were losing feeling from chemo side effects. At times, I was the chief cook and bottle washer, the driver, the laundress and the keeper of the schedules for appointments and medications. And as the weeks turned into months and into a year, my world got very, very small.

I am trying to accept that while I spent all this time thinking I was the lifeboat saving my daughter from drowning, in reality sometimes the person flailing around in the water was me.I didn’t have cancer, but the child I carried, the child I snuggled to my breast, the child that filled me so often with pride, did. They say that motherhood is like having a piece of your heart forever walk around outside your body. Both my heart and that little piece that is hers got broken by a relentless invader over which neither of us had any control.

I look like I’m fine. From the outside, you would never know that depending on the hour of the day a small decision that normally would not cause me any problem can turn me into a spinning top careening around the room. There are sixteen alarms set on my phone to remind me to do things that normally I would remember without the prompt, and I know I need them when the jingle starts and I look at the screen wondering what on earth I set it for.

It’s like there’s a time continuum of my life and cancer clipped out that year and moved it just a bit off to the left. And when it moved that clip, it took me with it. I’m still struggling with feeling like I’m on the other side of an invisible wall, so deeply was I embroiled with supporting my child as she dealt with each treatment challenge that steals a part of your soul. 

The active treatment part of my daughter’s cancer is over, but I’ve learned the difficult lesson that cancer is a never-ending story and I’m still working on how I’m going to fit that in with the rest of my world and step back into the now.

Articles

Caregiving for a patient with cancer is a journey unto itself, and one that can have its own ramifications as well. 

Lost Time As a Caregiver For a Patient with Cancer

There are moments in a person’s life that mean that a big change is coming. Those moments include graduation day, getting married, and having a child.

On March 15, 2019, I received a phone call that would alter the course of my life in ways that I couldn’t possibly have imagined. On the other end was my 27-year-old daughter and I sat dazed and confused as she tearfully said, “Mom … it’s cancer.”

The first thought I had was, “But you’re too young.” That is the course of my denial in a nutshell. When she first told me that she was investigating the lump she had found in the shower, I never once acknowledged that it might be cancer. I did online research about all the other things it could be because there was no way it was worst-case scenario.

I have never been more unprepared for news in my life.

I was able to pack up and move my life thousands of miles away from home and move into her one-bedroom apartment where I stayed for almost a year. I am more grateful than I can express that our relationship allowed us to dance around each other, both literally and figuratively, because I needed to be there like I need water to survive.

There were times when the anger and anxiety were so huge that there was barely room for either of us to breathe. There were times when we laughed so hard our sides ached (and I’ll admit I might have peed myself a little). There were times when we had to retreat to our corners because the fear had manifested into an ugly beast that gnashed its teeth and engulfed us with its foul breath. But there were also times of peace when the universe allowed her to not feel so much pain, so much sorrow, so much betrayal.

I thought I knew what was coming for her. One thing that I learned from holding her hand through the surgeries, treatments and various things she took or did to help with the side effects of the surgeries and treatments, as well as the added things you have to do to manage the side effects of THOSE (I’m sure you get the picture) was that my knowledge was woefully lacking.

There were many general pieces of information out there that apply to all women diagnosed with breast cancer, but when I went to look for resources specifically for people like me, mothers of young women going through the experience, there wasn’t a lot for me to find. And believe me, I’m a magical unicorn when it comes to Googling.

One of my biggest “aha” moments about how much outliers my daughter and I were happened in the radiation waiting room. It was winter, so both of us were wearing hats to keep warm, and when it was she, not I, who got up to go in for treatment the puppy-dog-head-tilt moments happened every time.

I could see the other patients and their family members struggle to reconcile what they were seeing, the innocence bubble burst. They would make eye contact with me and most of the time I would just have to look away. I just didn’t have room for their own shock and sorrow.

I am overjoyed to be able to say that the treatments worked, and my daughter is in full remission. Now I am living in “The After”. “The Before” is when you live in a world where your child did not have cancer.When you did not have to think about what it might be like if the battle were lost. In “The After” it is sharing a significantly dark sense of humor with your child talking about exactly where you write in a dating profile that you’re a breast cancer survivor and that you still have both your boobs.

In “The After” one thing has become perfectly clear. There is no end date to cancer. There is just The End …

And so, we go on, with the MRI’s and exams to check and see if the monster has returned. With me looking at my phone every time she calls hoping beyond all measure that all I’ll hear is … “Hey Mom … how ya doin’?”

I received a phone call that would alter the course of my life in ways that I couldn’t possibly have imagined. On the other end was my 27-year-old daughter and I sat dazed and confused as she tearfully said, “Mom … it’s cancer.”

Author | Debbie Legault

Lost Time As a Caregiver For a Patient with Cancer

You’re Never Prepared to Learn Your Adult Child Has Cancer