First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
Have I reached the age of maturity? Not the wrinkled skin and greying hair kind, but the sudden forced maturity that happens when you find out your child is dying.
Her pain is unbearable and the scans are frightening. It’s happening so fast. Emergency surgery and then the ICU doctor carelessly comments, “We did a biopsy for malignancy but I have a funny feeling your bowel obstruction might be caused by cancer.”
“Do you think this is funny?” Rece, my daughter, explodes from the hospital bed while I stand in silence, stroking her arm, teetering in disbelief, outraged and blindsided, fighting back tears. I think: “She’s only 28 so maybe it isn’t so. He could be wrong, right?”
The gut-wrenching, stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis came later and immediately thereafter a plethora of paperwork is pushed at us, and we schedule doctor consults and clinician meetings. We soon have a calendar full of tests and treatment sessions (and not the spa kind) sprinkled with postchemo nurse visits. The tables are turned.
I’m the older one and should be the victim, I think, not my young daughter. She comes from good genes. One grandmother is 100 and the other is 94, so how does this happen? They both wish they could trade places with her, as do I. Be strong and carry on … it seems so trite, but this becomes my new mantra.
Rece stays positive, while her Instagram is flooded with “you got this” fist pumps and anti-cancer memes. Friends of ours won the Princess Margaret Cancer Hospital lottery a few years back; a grand prize of a home, a cottage, a new car and cash. I want to win the lottery, too; I want her life to be spared. Well-wishers send links to cures and alternative therapies and promising clinical trials and lots of prayers are promised.
She takes each new setback in stride, strong, brave and ready to do whatever it takes. Regular scans, bloodwork, treatment, the occasional procedure or major surgery, all chipping away at her body but never eroding her spirit. We commute to Toronto seven days a week, so my husband and I can be with our girl who’s nearing the end of her life.
Now at a second hospital, the girl who once winced at having a COVID shot, lies in the bed with a colostomy that no longer works, a catheter attached to each kidney. An experimental PTEG tube runs from her stomach out through her neck so that excess fluids and air can escape. This replaced the “uncomfortable” NG tube that ran from her stomach out through her nose. She has a permanent “port” below her collar bone once used for chemo infusions (30 to be exact) and is now attached to a narcotic pain pump. Her arm has a PICC line (a double lumen version) so she can receive both IV nutrition and a second med directly – a far better option than poking her incessantly, and often in the middle of the night, to find a vein that doesn’t collapse. There are two subcutaneous needles in the back of each arm and one in each thigh to receive scheduled injections. Sounds like suffering, torture and most certainly worthy of an OMFG from her, but she still wants to live and go home.
Somehow we are able to laugh together still.
Each evening Rece’s fiancé drives through rush hour to be at her side. As a pain diversion we (her fiancé, father, brother, sister and I) take turns watching pseudo “reality” shows – the Housewives and Below Deck variety, until she says “Mom it hurts so much, help me …” and the real reality sinks in again.
Her pain management has become the medical team’s nemesis, with higher doses of new narcotic cocktails no longer providing any relief. How do I stay strong when my heart is breaking for her?
I have to be the parent in the room, mature, in charge and always coming to the rescue, and never losing it. But not this time. While my life has been interrupted, hers is abruptly ending. How does a mother prepare for this?
After 72 days, we finally arranged for our fighter to come home. Our living room is converted to a hospital room. Beside Rece’s hospital bed is a cot for her fiancé to be close at night. Our dining room table has medical supplies, delivered daily, piled up to the chandelier, and the hutch has a row of red solo cups now repurposed for doses of premeasured injections. A whiteboard on the wall has replaced the artwork to keep us on track from one nurse visit to the next. The compassionate and patient palliative doctor comes daily and tenderly responds to frequent text messages and calls at all hours of the day and night. In between sleeps, Rece reminisces with us about all the fun times we had together. She talks about the future; she still has dreams.
Jacqueline van der Jagt lives in Oakville, Ont.