My heart broke the first time I heard these words from one of my children. Even though the surgeries have been small, they’ve taken their toll. I’ve been tired, been under lift restrictions (no more than 10 pounds), and on some days, been simply wiped in the evening when I normally play with the kids.
This won’t be the last time I hear this, but hearing it for the first made me want to cry. We were simply sitting at breakfast, doing our normal morning routine of laughter and chaos. I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. I think H was asking to gauge my mood for the day. When I said, “No, Mommy isn’t tired,” she gave me the biggest smile.
I know that I’ve been more short-tempered in the evening. Two-year-olds can be trying on a good day. Potty-training twin two-year-olds while going through a cancer diagnosis has proven to be trying on both my husband and me. Would we have been this irritable and lose our cool this often without all of the medical mumbo-jumbo going on? I’d like to think no, but it’s hard to say how much cancer is changing our parenting and personalities.
H has noticed the most. She’s my watcher and observes everything. She asks questions obsessively to see if there is going to be a change in our routine. “Mommy go doctor again?”, “Mommy still have owie?”, “Mommy hurt?”, “Mommy not happy?”
We’ve already began to notice some behavioral changes over the past week. H has been solid on the potty-training for a while and though that still seems to be going well, she’s just more clingy. She keeps asking to be rocked and held. She now holds back and stays next to me when I do drop-off at daycare instead of running to her friends. Normally, I would assume she was sick, but we aren’t seeing any signs of that. We think she just senses a change is in the air and needs reassurance.
Baby H struggles with Mommy not always being able to hold him. And hitting my port constantly. He’s learning to walk and if I’m not ever-vigilant, he will, without fail, hurl himself hands-first on my port and I can’t help but yelp in pain (which confuses him and often makes him cry). Luckily, the scar is healing and this is no longer excruciating.
Outside of dying, these changes are my biggest fear. I fear not being the parent I want to be because I’m simply out of reserves. I can’t wait to get my first chemo session under my belt so that I can figure out how we make my treatment seem seamless to the kids while using friends and families to distract them from the normal things Mommy isn’t doing that day.
I know they are resilient and I take comfort in the fact that they are too young to remember me going through this, but I’m their mom. I worry.
Cancer Ever After 
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