The Worst Day Of My Life Was My Kids’ Best Day
The best day of my kids’ life was one of the worst of mine.
“Sweetie, Daddy is going to pick you up from preschool today,” I hesitantly explained.
“Boys lunch,” my four-year-old screeched with delight. After a run around the room, he stopped and looked at me quizzically. “Why?” In two years of attending preschool Dad had never picked him up.
“Mommy has to go to the hospital.”
“Why?”
I took a deep breath. How does one explain a breast biopsy to a four-year-old? My therapist instructed me to always answer his questions simple and direct. If his two-year-old brother is in ear shot, be aware of their developmental differences. Don’t offer up unnecessary-to-him information. Remind him I am healthy, and the numerous appointments are to ensure I stay healthy and don’t end up with young breast cancer, chemo, and die anyways like my aunt did. “The doctors need to check my breast to ensure it’s healthy.”
“How will they do that?”
I silently cursed his curious and beautiful mind. “It’s called a biopsy. It’s like a shot, but they take a little bit of the tissue out and test it.” I exhaled deeply. “I won’t be able to carry you until tomorrow night because my body will hurt. My doctors are being extra careful to make sure I stay healthy for a long time.” It was too abstract to explain I carried a mutated BRCA gene that put me at an elevated risk for breast and ovarian cancer, and too soon to share that in eight months I would have a prophylactic double mastectomy. He ran off, more interested in toy cars than this conversation.
As I left for the hospital, my husband informed me our child announced proudly to his teachers at drop off, “Mom’s getting her boob poked with a needle today. And Dad is picking me up!” I pleaded with the universe for benign results, and that my surgery would not be moved up because of a cancer diagnosis. Just get through the next moment became my mantra, even if that moment was as tiny as spreading jam on toast.
Even though I’d been screening with breast MRI’s and mammograms for eleven years, this was my first biopsy — at thirty-seven. I was lucky. BRCA carriers, who choose surveillance after finding out they are high risk often have handfuls of biopsies before forty. Would today be when my luck ran out? Could this be the day my life shattered cleanly into “before” and “after”? Scanxiety. Woof.
While not everyone is high risk for cancer, everyone has (or will) have something that sucks medically in their life. Sometimes it’s one person removed, and sometimes it’s you. But just like that classic children’s book Everyone Poops — if we eat, we poop; if we are alive, we will die. We can face mortality a gazillion different ways. Some of us do in our thirties, and some not until decades later. But face it we must. Dealing with medical uncertainty while a parent of littles can be like adding heat and moisture to an already unstable atmosphere over a warming ocean: it can become its own destructive hurricane. And if not careful, it can be catastrophic. Endless what ifs. Contingency plans. The fear of the unknown.
A few hours later, a friend picked me up from the hospital. I’d taken a sedative to calm my nerves, and thus couldn’t drive myself the few miles. I expressed my full range of emotions in the safety of her car. Upon exiting, I walked very slowly up our steep driveway, recognizing my sweet little boys had no idea how terrified I was in this moment. Nor did they need to. They just needed mommy present. As present as my drugged, anxious mind could be.
When I entered the house, my senses were overwhelmed with delight: spiced pumpkin pie aroma; squeals from my children licking home-made whipped cream off beaters; and the image of the three most important people in my life having a kitchen dance party to questionably appropriate music from my youth.
The fear of prematurely leaving the loves of my life engulfed me. But then my oldest noticed me, and beamed as he fast-talked and recounted how much fun he and Daddy had this afternoon. I inhaled deeply, grateful I’d processed and left some of my fear in my friend’s car. I was able to crouch down, and give a one-armed side hug to each boy, thankful to be home with them.
And then it hit me, just as strongly as my fear had hit earlier: today —one of the scariest days of my life— was going to be remembered as a core happy memory for my son. We are independent people, each the star of our own show. Today our scripts veered wildly from each other. And I didn’t want to tarnish that. I wanted to protect his joy and not sour that sweetened cream all over his nose. What a privilege to have that extra drop of resiliency to place my hardship aside and be able to honor his happy moment. Not all hardships allow us that extra drop. But when we can offer that protection to our children, their purity can shine an extra ray of sunshine through our storm clouds. We don’t need to put our fear of the unknown on them. That is parenting.
Jessie Lerner is a memoir writer chronicling her BRCA journey with honesty and humor. She’s a member of the Madison Writers’ Studio, a fabulous pesto maker, and a boy mom living in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and two children. Read more at JessieLerner.com and connect @jtlerner on Instagram and Facebook.
source https://www.scarymommy.com/parenting/the-worst-day-of-my-life-was-my-kids-best-day
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