i have cancer I can no longer put my children first.

In February, two months before my 40th birthday, my left breast was swollen and painful. I chalked it up to a series of heaps of humiliation known as menopause. However, as March and April passed, her breast condition seemed to worsen. In May, I rushed to make an appointment for a mammogram. I feared the worst, but getting a mammogram proved more difficult than I had imagined. When I finally got an appointment, I was pretty sure something was very wrong, so I took her sister along.

Shockingly, my worries turned out not to be preventive. The radiologist was nervous and had a dark expression. She said she was “extremely concerned” about a mass in my breast and lymph nodes, but the hospital had been unable to provide me with a biopsy for several weeks. Basically, I had cancer, but no one told me more about it. Patting my arm like I was a rebellious dog, she sent me down her hallway to a nurse who tried to pick up the pieces of my life.

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“I can’t wait two weeks for a biopsy,” I told her, crying. “I will go anywhere, anytime.”

She was arrogant and reassuring, preoccupied with the keyboard, but then stopped and looked up at me.

“It helps. Many mothers say they can’t attend on certain days or times because of things like their kids’ soccer.”

I didn’t know if she was criticizing me or other mothers for my indifference to the children’s extracurricular activities. I judged them. As a social worker who supports children and their caregivers, for years I’ve rambled on to adults about the value of predictable routines in children’s lives, and the reality is that even though their mothers are dead, What is the point if those children can participate in soccer practice? ?

“Dad will drive the kids to dance class,” my sister said firmly to the nurse. “I need a biopsy.”

She said she would see what she could do.

My sister and I left the hospital, stunned that our worst fears had been right, but knowing very little about the diagnosis and prognosis. The radiologists and nurses and their mammography machines were in a fancy suburb of Boston, and I had to walk past a Kumon tutoring company to reach an expensive coffee shop. We were sitting outside where a young man was being led by two older men talking loudly and incessantly about his impending graduation from the prestigious local university. The elderly were edgewise and unable to understand the language. My sister and I were eavesdropping in silence with grief. I often thought of mothers driving to practices, competitions, or Kumon. Mothers sliced ​​oranges, carried lacrosse sticks, loaded math apps on iPads, hoarsely cheered as cancer blossomed uncontrollably in their minds. .

Even though I know I have cancer, I put off mammograms, biopsies, and even physicals because of fear of knowing nothing more and because I’m too busy delivering the children I want to deliver. I was itching from the fear of women who would make me. 10 years at a prestigious university. The college student loudly made his stand on a topic that didn’t interest me.

But even as I was furious, my heart was filled with my children. My eldest son he is 10 years old. He’s long-legged and knowledgeable, but he’s still glued to the creatures of Calico. His younger brother he is 5 years old. He’s goofy, round-cheeked, tongue-tied, sweet and witty, but we still don’t know if the fairies are real. The idea that they existed without my care, without a mother to order school uniforms, talk to them from the shelf of heartache, bandage their wounds, read books . Charlotte’s Web It was excruciating and all-consuming to cry aloud before bed and watch Charlotte’s beautiful death. I could only think of their weakness. It pushed my own pain, my fear of my body and my life.

Over the next few weeks, I secured a biopsy, an oncologist, and finally made a diagnosis and a plan. The cancer is advanced but has not spread to vital organs or bones. Tumors may respond to treatment. Maybe the kids will keep me, but before that I will have to endure a year of fiery trials of chemo, mastectomy, daily radiation, and regular medications.

My life fell apart around me. It left her husband with a permanent furrow between his eyebrows. Two years ago I had an operation. My father took the kids right after that and I was able to sit with him in a quiet house and my only job was to eat and sleep and heal. We both know he will give or try to give me the same space over the next few months. But I have to accept it again and again.

I started treatment in early June. And soon I started feeling terrible.

Chemotherapy poisons the cancer, and it also poisons the body, including the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose, the lining of the stomach, bone marrow, and joints. I spend a lot of time in bed. My two children came to visit me and jumped on that bed. Sometimes I indulge in this. Sometimes I suggest they walk away. I yearn, more than ever before, to reduce my feelings of meanness. It is stronger than greed and the desire to protect the baby.

Providence, where I live, is a small town. It turns out that my daughter’s friend’s mother’s partner does acupuncture and specializes in helping people undergoing chemotherapy. I made a promise. The time was only during her daughter’s piano lessons. After dropping her off, I realized that an acupuncture clinic was downstairs at her music school. I lay at the table while the acupuncturist worked, and it was long before I realized that the intermittent piano music was coming from upstairs and not from the tiny Bluetooth speaker on the counter next door. it took time. Was that my daughter playing? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t always paying close attention to what she was practicing at her house. I missed her recital last weekend because of the chemotherapy.

For acupuncture to “work”, you need to “relax”. I wasn’t relaxed. I wondered: Is that Laura playing on me?if she had her very Are you sorry you missed the recital? My friend and daughter were out and brought Laura a bouquet of pale pink ranunculus. This eased my guilt, but what did it mean to her? Is she thinking of me now while playing? is she worried about me? Could her worries seep through the ceiling like a leak? How will my two children survive this attack on my motherhood and my ability to care for them? How will they survive when I can’t predictably give them day and night? The overhead music got me hooked and I needed to know if it was a girl I knew playing.

I traced my finger along the edge of the light green sheet that covered my body. I couldn’t help but think of shrouds and mortuary coverings. I couldn’t help but think about my daughter.

Just before starting chemo, my friend Margaret came over and sat on my blue couch. She told me her story two years before her, when she was being treated for ovarian cancer, as her lesson. She was in a chemo-induced slump, but in her bedroom there was a basket of clean laundry that stared at her persistently–it’s all about care, parenting, and a home that needs attention. It was a symbol—so she pushed her fatigue aside and folded the laundry. Damn laundry. It took hours to complete one basket, after which she was overwhelmed by her efforts and had to take a nap. “It wasn’t worth it,” she told me. “But I thought you were.”

I listened in horror and repeated the story to my husband, who furrowed his brows in concern. he accepted everything. We were beginning to understand each other not so well over the next few months. Friends and relatives said they would come and help us, and after a moment of hesitation, we said: Yes please thank you what day will you be arriving and how long can you stay?

“Who…does all that you do?” one of my friends asked me as I was explaining my treatment plan.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But that wouldn’t be me.” But I knew that as I said that, I would keep hearing the song of the laundry basket sirens and her daughter’s play songs. And you have to cover your ears.

Every day is my own vulnerability, all the things I am losing or soon to lose: hair, productivity, breasts, physical integrity, reproductive function, the belief that my body is my friend, not my enemy, It reminded me of new abilities. To enjoy flavorful food and take care of our children without putting ourselves at risk. I imagine a basket full of Margaret’s clean laundry, and I imagine it lying unfolded.

Sometimes I feel like a distant mother in an English period drama, like my kids kissing me goodnight or telling me good news just out of the shower. Except I’m not busy ordering dresses from London or writing letters on thick cream-colored stationery.I’m lying around watching another man kill another woman happy valley. At such times, I wonder who I am.

Creating and maintaining stability, safety and routines for my children has been my motto throughout my adult life. The idea that any upheaval in my own life, be it a move, a death, a pandemic, affects not only me but them, was not only my parenting, but also the organizational principle by which I survived. It kept me going even in difficult times.

It’s hard to let go of the idea of ​​sorting out my cancer experience to my kids, ignoring the bedtime cacophony, slamming the bedroom door, and giving in to the prioritization of my own needs and just resting. Patient treatment and healing became my goal, replacing the idea that my most important job was to raise my children in the best possible way. Withdrawing from my children and withdrawing into myself feels like I’m forgetting everything I’ve been taught as a mother and passed on to others, but I feel like I’m going to survive. I can’t find a way.

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During my second acupuncture appointment, I lay on the table and managed to focus on my breathing. I woke up from my sleep.

My children’s experience of this catastrophe, this miserable and miserable time, will leave an imprint on their little minds. But now I realize that my challenge is to swim through fire. They watch and wait on the shore. The acupuncturist quietly entered the room, moving the needles and moving my limbs up and down. He didn’t say anything while doing this, and I also kept silent, probably for fear of breaking the spell. I’ll blow you a kiss from the riverIn my opinion. Someone needs to stand by the water with them and hold their hand.