As someone who has undergone treatment for early stage breast cancer at the age of 30, breast cancer has taken so much from me. Chemotherapy, radiation, multiple surgeries – at a fairly young age, I’ve been through the ringer. However, breast cancer has taken something more important to me than my breasts and my hair.
When I was 7 years old my mother, Patricia, died of metastatic breast cancer at the age of 40. She was only two months shy of her 41st birthday. When she died, she left behind a husband and three children under the age of 12.
My mother was initially diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer when she was 35. She had a radical mastectomy and could only withstand six months of a recommended 12-month chemotherapy regiment. She was NED for a short period of time before the cancer recurred – this time, stage 4. She was diagnosed stage 4 the same month I turned 7 years old. My mother passed away six months after her stage 4 diagnosis.
She didn’t lose any battles. She died of a horrible disease. My mother died, knowing that the same disease might happen to me.
It did.
Because I was so young when she died, I don’t remember my mother. My memories of her are more like snippets, like a dream I can recall with some vague certainty. I was 3 years old when she was first diagnosed and 7 when she died. I heard a recording of her voice when I became an adult, and it didn’t register any recognition for me. Nothing.
There was nothing my mother wanted more than to be a parent, and metastatic breast cancer took that from her. She didn’t see her children graduate from high school and college or my eldest brother’s law school graduation. My mother wasn’t there to see either of my brothers get married to their beautiful wives. She never met any of her six amazing grandchildren.
My mother also wasn’t there when I was diagnosed with breast cancer (I’ve never married or have any children). During treatment, I missed my mother terribly. I wished and prayed that she could have been there at my doctor’s appointment, sitting in the chair next to me during chemo, or waiting for me after I woke up from my surgeries.
My father lived local but he couldn’t emotionally be there for me during cancer treatment. I have never been close to my stepmother, and that emotional disconnect between the two of us was never more apparent than during treatment. My parents were only a 25 minute drive from my house, but they might as well been 25 hours away. Now and then, they came through, usually because I demanded that they did, but it wasn’t the emotional support I needed.
Because of that and my parents’ hands-off approach, I felt so alone during treatment. I wished terribly that my mother would have been there with me. I have no way of knowing if we would have been close or even liked each other. When a parent dies when you are so young, they become almost saint-like in your memory.
Today, October 26th, marks 27 years since my mother’s life ended because of metastatic breast cancer. She is the reason why I don’t wear a pink boa and a T-shirt bedazzled with the word SURVIVOR. I look like her and have been told I walk and talk like her. There’s no guarantee that I won’t end up like her – gone too young.
She is why I want everyone to know that we need to get off the awareness train and hop on the research train. Those with metastatic breast cancer should be the forefront of all discussion regarding breast cancer. Their stories should be told. I’m not going to stop telling my mother’s story.
