6 week Radiation Follow Up
Ahhhh…back to those gowns! This morning was my six week follow up with Dr. Torres. Six weeks since my last radiation treatment. Funny how time passes; a feeling of seeming like it was just yesterday that I was laying on that cold, hard table day after day, while at the same time feeling like it was a lifetime ago walking through those double doors into that radiation room. My appointment was quick, 15 minutes at best and the majority of that time was going over vitals and the latest supplements added to my daily handful, now totaling 10 with the added Tamoxifen. Dr. Torres quickly looked at my healing skin, reminded (scolded me) me not to wear wire bras and before I knew it the appointment was over. I quickly snuck in a hug to my favorite radiation tech before heading out the double doors and pouring myself my last cup of “radiation coffee”, something I had done so many mornings leaving from my daily radiation treatment. I looked at the comforting Lorna Doone cookies sitting next to the coffee cups, smiling as I remembered one too many times sitting in my car eating them while writing or sending a series of heart emojis to my mom after treatment.
I am a true believer that things happen in our lives for a reason, for a purpose. That the timing of things, both good and bad, are meant to happen at that exact time in our lives. It likely won’t make sense; it may trigger anger, sadness, or it may make us smile at the mere irony of the timing. As I sat in my car this morning after my appointment, I realized how much I missed exchanging heart emoji’s with my mom every morning. And then, while looking through old notes on my phone I found a note I had written to my parents from a year ago that I did not remember writing:
1/23/16
Dear Mom & Dad –
I always hoped in my mind that there would never be a day where I would have to think about losing you. But as I grow older, and dare I say wiser, I know that that day will arrive way too soon. In the last six months, I have watched both of you lose your mothers, my grandmothers. It has broken by heart to watch you both have to say goodbye to the person who made you both the people you are today. I watched in awe as you, Dad, gave a heartwarming and moving account of all the people Grandma touched in some way or another, many memories I had never known before it was too late. And, mom, watching you say goodbye to Gramma was as heartbreaking as going through it myself. While I loved grandma Higgins very much, my love for gram was different. She was a second mother, and someone I respected the opinion of and was always eager to see, hug, smile with. So, because I have learned that you and I have no control over when we will lose the ones we love, I feel the need to write. Write memories that sneak up out of nowhere that I don’t want to one day let slip out of my mind and never be able to find again. Write about times we’ve had: both good and the not so good. Write about the times with Mason and Madisyn, because one day they will have to look at saying goodbye too. But what I want to make sure I write about the most, is how very much I love you both. We are not the perfect family. We are far from it. But the bond I have with both of you, though very different, is a bond that I feel the luckiest daughter in the world to have.
I sat in my car, wondering why I had found this note today. Why hadn’t I sent it to my parents a year ago when I wrote it. Was it pure coincidence that I had made it a goal to write about life, and family, nearly two months before I was diagnosed with cancer, the exact event that has led me down the path of writing my most personal feelings about my experiences over the last 9 months. Or was it somehow my psyche preparing me for this life event that I never in a million years saw coming. I still believe my grandmother’s passing from cancer was some kind of a sign. A life event that so tragically prepared me for what was to come. To know to ask questions and to not always accept the first answer you get, to know that things can change in a blink of an eye. To know that time and timing can mean the difference between living and dying.
Exactly one year ago today, Maura was born. I will never forget the events leading up to finding out that Jen, one of my closest friends, was pregnant with her third baby. Early May of 2015, Jen and I had traveled to Pennsylvania for the Annual KidsPeace Mud Run. We both always looked forward to this event; it was a night away to let loose and have fun. The run was harder for Jen than it should have been, but we chalked it up to the one or two or more drinks we had shared the night before. A couple of weeks later, Jen sent me a text that only I would know what she was referencing. It was one word, written more than once. It started with an F. I knew immediately that she was pregnant. I had known in my mind that this day would come for one of us, but I never knew how I would deal with it. I was happy for her, and anxious because I knew she was anxious as this was not fully planned out. But, also jealous. I wanted a third baby so bad, Mark did not. It was a constant battle in our house, most of the time joking but those jokes were just a cover for my desire to so badly have a third child. Jen and I constantly talked about the what-ifs of having a third child, and I think we both struggled with the what-ifs if one of us got pregnant and the other did not. Jen would later joke that she got a baby and I got cancer. That’s how true friendships work though; you find the good in the bad, and you rely on dark humor to get you through the bad. Because me not getting pregnant, and Jen getting pregnant, likely saved my life. Fast forward to January 19th, 2016, one year ago today. Maura was born. Ten days late (and weighing nearly as much as Jen at almost 10 pounds!). I couldn’t wait to meet her, to say hello to this little baby that I was at one point jealous of but now couldn’t wait to love her. The next day I visited Jen and baby Maura at the hospital. That very same day marked Julie Denney’s return from medical leave and her first-day doing rounds at the hospital since completing treatment for Breast Cancer. Julie was my midwife for both of my babies and would continue to be my OBGYN. When my water broke with Mason, she was on-call and was the person on the other end of the phone at 2:00 am coaching me not to push while I was sitting in my bathroom ready to have a baby. She was the person who delivered Mason and was by my side sharing our fears as I began to hemorrhage, not knowing if I would need a blood transfusion or who to take care of first as Mark was nearly passing out by my side. But through it all, she was always calm. She had a way to make you feel at peace, to make the panic subside. Seven years later, there she was standing in front of me again in Jen’s hospital room. She hugged me, and then took my face in her hands and said, “you need to make an appointment with me.” I had put off seeing her for more years than I should have. It was Jen who was constantly telling me to make an appointment, and it was Maura who had decided to be 10 days late in order to somehow create a perfect storm of Julie and I being in the same room at the same exact time. Two months later, it would be Julie who would find my lump. A lump that would later be diagnosed as Stage 2 Cancer, driven and fed by estrogen and progesterone. The same hormones that, should I have gotten pregnant with a third baby, would have likely made a curable cancer quickly become incurable.
As I sat in my car yesterday, thinking how the events in our lives all play into each other and how important timing is, I smiled knowing the following day was Maura’s birthday. I smiled knowing that if it hadn’t been for her, I may not have been sitting in the car drinking my last cup of “radiation coffee” until next January when I would have my one year follow up with Dr. Torres and would be one-year cancer free. I smiled at the note I had just found, written to my parents one year ago after my grandmother’s passing but before my own cancer journey could have ever been imagined. I smiled, and I cried, as I sat thinking about how things happen in our lives that we can’t possibly see the reason for. And how absolutely perplexed and awed we can become when those same events in our lives come full circle and we can see how every little event added up and brought us to where we are now.
Happy 1st Birthday, Maura. Thank you for being my perfect storm.
