Choosing life - Surviving cancer, becoming a mom

While that might be what the science of cancer treatment suggested back then (this was the early 1980s), it said more about illness, and possibly death, than it did about life. I was single then, happy in my work as a teacher and graduate student at a Midwestern university, but longing for a family. There was a missing part of my life where a mate should be and another space meant for our child. It was as if my life was a puzzle that was incomplete. Survival was one of the pieces I needed to put in place, right next to those for husband and child and a good life together.

Medical science could help, but science is limited. In my heart it seemed as if a particular child was calling out to me, although I could not make out a face or sense a distinct personality. This missing part of my life was not about anything happening in my body. Unlike both the cancer and the treatments, it was not physical. Still, the magnetic pull toward this mate and this child seemed more real to me than anything revealed in a lab or under a microscope. Those tests showed illness in my body; but I decided instead to focus upon health in heart and spirit.

Miracle of miracles...
I accepted all of the treatments offered except for the hysterectomy for my body. For heart and spirit, I chose to do all I could to bring purpose and joy to life, both for myself and for my students and friends. I would live as well as possible in the present and trust the future. Several months after the last chemotherapy treatment I graduated and moved back East.

Within weeks I met the kind, thoughtful man who is now my husband. We decided to wait a while before trying for a child. But despite care with birth control, pregnancy soon followed. Whoever it was didn't have much patience and didn't care that neither of us felt ready to be a parent.

Today, our son is an average lad who probably spends too much time playing computer games and too little time studying. He is tall, big like his father, a book lover like me, and has never had any health problem more serious than the flu. Despite his remarkable good health, we know that because I once had cancer he has a slightly higher risk, as a young adult, of testicular cancer.

Like most teens, he prefers to believe he is invincible and will live forever, but on a deeper level he understands that he must be vigilant about his health, particularly his sexual health. We have taught him to listen to experts, but know that they don't necessarily have all the answers, or even the right answers. There will be times when he must make difficult choices, with imperfect information. This is part of being an adult.

Choosing life...
At the time that I received that grim diagnosis, now over 20 years ago, I was one of the youngest women ever to have breast cancer. Back then, pregnancy after breast cancer was unheard of. Today, sadly, the disease occurs in women as young as their late teens. There is still no proven prevention and no known cure. The good news is that treatments and survival rates have improved.

Parenting after cancer has received almost no attention from the experts. No one knows how many children have been born to mothers who are cancer survivors, but the number must be in the thousands. Sometimes, when I am in the midst of a parental rant about the undone homework or the messy room, I just stop and look at him. An average kid, but to me he is a living reminder about what is real, what is essential. "Sure, Mum," he says, giving me a hug. "I'll get it done." Irritation forgotten, I hug my son and think how lucky we are that we got to choose life.