My bloggers confession is that I am also a lurker. I recently came out of the virtual shadows to blogger, Emilie, and told her I’d been keeping tabs on her and checking in regularly. I enjoy her writing style and have been following her posts with smiles through my tears. Her attitude is truly awe inspiring. I asked if she would please write a guest post for Cribsheet and share her story. She did. Please read below.

Here’s a question I’ve been pondering this week: How do you explain to your 21-month-old son that mommy’s hair is about to fall out and that soon she is going to have different hair — brown hair, purple hair, maybe even some fun platinum blonde hair?

Here’s another one: After you’ve weaned your newborn baby (because you can’t breastfeed during chemotherapy), how do you decide whether to accept an offer of donated breastmilk from a stranger? What test results do you ask the donor for? What medications do you screen her for? And how much do you trust your gut?

And another one, which came to me this morning: How do you pull yourself together on the playground when you leave your toddler for a minute (don’t worry - he’s supervised!) to grab something out of the diaper bag, and when you come back, he says with utter childish innocence, “Mommy come right back!” And you almost break down in tears because you know that someday - maybe sooner, maybe later - mommy might not come back, and all that precious trust you’ve helped build in your child will be shattered?

These are questions I never dreamed I’d be dealing with two months after giving birth to my second son, Benjamin. Before he was born, my main worries were how well his older brother, Daniel, would accept him and whether I’d be able to juggle caring for two little ones at home.

I’d gotten the surprise cancer diagnosis last summer, when I was nine weeks pregnant. A long, grueling surgery followed, and the cantaloupe-sized tumor in my abdomen (a retroperitoneal sarcoma) was completely removed. Ben survived the whole ordeal and came out unharmed. He was our miracle. We thought we were in the clear.

But three weeks after he was born, I went in for a follow-up CT scan and found out that the cancer had spread after all. This time, it was in my hip and both lungs. The prognosis, as one of my oncologists described it, is “not good.” Another said it’s “probably not curable.”

The news sent our family into a surreal freefall. I can’t even begin
to describe what the past six weeks have been like, with the whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, tests, blood draws, radiation treatments and a first round of chemotherapy, which ended last week. Who needs all that when you have a newborn baby to bond with? I don’t.

And yet I have no choice. I just get up and do it and make sure to
cuddle with my little ones as often as I can.

As much as I try to go into all this with a positive attitude and a
fighter’s spirit, I sometimes find myself in very dark, angry,
depressing places. And I need reassurance that my family will be OK if the worst-case scenario happens. I need to prepare for the worst, just as I hope for the best. I don’t know what’s going to happen. What I do know is that cancer changes a family, even if the survivor lives a long time.

My husband and I have become closer as we rediscover what’s truly important in our lives. And mostly, that’s our family and the friends who have surrounded us with their love.

Cancer sucks. But it doesn’t suck quite so much when Ben is cooing at me for the first time, or when Daniel rips a big handful of dandelions out of the lawn and gives them to me with a big smile. They force me to stay in the present and not dwell so much on the scary stuff. And I have to admit, I’m looking forward to wearing the wigs to the playground!

You can read Emilie’s blog here http://lemmondrops.blogspot.com

If any other parent out there has gone through a similar experience or can offer advice - she’d love to hear it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 8:50 am and is filed under Family Life, Guest Bloggers, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.