Cancer and Answering the Phone

It’s been almost seven years since I picked up the phone and heard my 27-year-old daughter utter the words “Mom … Mom, it’s cancer.” I can close my eyes and see myself sitting on the couch, opening up the computer to see if I could change the flight I was booked on for her niece’s first birthday three days later to an earlier one to get to my daughter. I watch myself hang up, call her father to come home and then run to the bathroom to throw up.

It was a lot.

I know it’s been a long time, six years of which my daughter has been NED (no evidence of disease), but that phone call still impacts what happens to my being when I look at the phone and it’s her.

My vision narrows, my heart beats a little faster, and I need to close my eyes and center myself in the present before I pick it up, just in case.

It’s a sad place for me to rest. Most of the time when I pick up the phone now, there’s joy on the other end. Or an “I need to rant, Mom, and you’re the safest place for me to do that”. Or her toddler has some symptoms and she wants to check out if she should be more worried than as a mom she already is.  You know, normal things between a mother and daughter who have a healthy relationship.

I really thought that seeing her name on the call display would stop being a trigger at some point.  I am genuinely hoping that some day it will. But in the back of my mind lives this irrational fear that as soon as I relax into my pre-cancer bubble of not knowing, the universe will cackle malevolently and jump out to smack me in the face with a frying pan again.

It’s one of those things about living in “The After” and it’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t walked in my shoes. What people on the outside of this see is how far she is from diagnosis, how her life is so rich with family and career, how statistics should tell me that the likelihood she’ll have a recurrence goes down with each passing year. And I see those things, too.  She has accomplished so much despite what happened to derail her life at 27 and my pride in her is unmeasurable. But…

What I experience when I see her name in the call display, in a millisecond, is a rapid film reel through 11 months of misery.

I have done all kinds of therapy, read self-help books, joined support groups and none of the tools they provide seem to work to push me past this issue.  What I have settled upon is a radical acceptance that this is the legacy I have to live with. I made a choice to be with her every step of the way because I love her more than life, and what I saw her go through, being unable to make it go away, fractured me a little.

That saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger doesn’t apply to me when it comes to my child’s cancer experience. Helplessly watching her struggle through the side effects of treatment tore a place in my spirit that simply refuses to completely heal.

So if you’re struggling out there, feeling a little broken inside, I see you. And if you’re not, man I wish I were you.

Cancer sucks.

This piece reflects the author’s personal experience and perspective. For medical advice, please consult your health care provider.

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