Opinion

It's been 5 years since her fight with breast cancer

By Riley Hinds
The Advocate

I remember exactly where I was when my dad told me the news. I was 21 years old, and a passenger in his old pickup truck. He called me to come help him with an errand that seemed unnecessary. Thinking back, I should have recognized it was a setup.

"So, your mom's been diagnosed with breast cancer," he said. It was blunt, and I felt like I had just been hit in the forehead with a broad club. I left it at that for a few minutes, trying to think while wrapping the information around my brain.

I asked, "What is that supposed to mean? Is she going to be okay?" My thinking was turning into a weird sludge.

"We're not sure yet, but we think it was found early," he said calmly.

"How long has this been known?" I asked, gritting my teeth, slowly growing angry."About two weeks," he responded.

After this I don't remember much, but I knew I had to keep it together around my family, at all costs, for my mom's sake.

I didn't know much about cancer. I did know that two of my school classmates had died of cancer, nice kids who didn't even see their 16th birthday. So I naturally came to this conclusion: you get cancer, you die.

And now my mom had it.I wasn't even aware there were different forms of breast cancer. All I knew was bad news had hit the fan.

My mom underwent surgery almost immediately. After a month of recovery, she began 13 weeks of daily radiation treatments.

I remember my mother was regularly so nauseous from the radiation treatments that she had to lay down for hours before she could function properly again. Often times my father left work early just to help. My mother never broke down. She made valiant efforts hiding it from my little sister and me, but I have good ears, and a tendency to hear conversations meant to be private.

Most agree my mom was one of the lucky ones: the cancer was caught early and it didn't have a chance to spread any farther.

To this day I wonder if her ordeal is over. The fact it even began is still tugging at my strings of reason. It may not have fully sunk in yet. There is always that small chance it could surface again. Maybe it will be sudden and violent, or feeble and weak. It's really anybody's guess.

I asked my mom if she still thinks about a recurrence of breast cancer.
"Yes," she said, "but do I worry about it? Only a little. There is a five-year risk factor associated with breast cancer, which means; if you make it five years past diagnosis and treatment, you're at less risk for having it reoccur, so I'm almost there."

But she said it with a smile that didn't quite make it to her eyes.

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