Listen
to Linda's daughter share her experience with her mother's cancer
in her own words. (440 K .au file)
Listen
to Linda's daughter share her experience with her mother's cancer
in her own words. (440 K .au file)
Linda's twin daughters, Jennifer and Jessica, were fifteen when Linda was diagnosed. Each had to find their own way to deal with news. Jennifer was comfortable visiting the doctors with her mom, changing bandages and giving medication. Jessica was comfortable giving support by making snacks, bringing school work home, and continuing the daily chores.
When my mom told me she had cancer I was freaked out. I was like, why? Why do you have cancer? What did you do? Of course, I knew that she didn't do anything to get cancer. I talked to her about this in her room. That's where she told me, and then I went in my room and I was laying there thinking, okay, okay, this is going to be hell. It was really something totally unexpected and I knew because we had a house, and we had a dog, and we had a yard that everything was going to be thrown off. She was going to be at the doctor's, probably have surgery. I'm like, Oh my gosh! Chemotherapy - what is that? And so I decided that I wanted to be informed, and I was really glad my mom told me and I was really glad, because even though I was fifteen and I couldn't drive, and I couldn't vote, can't drink, and I can't make all these really big decisions, a really big decision was: how am I going to treat my mom?
We were the kind of people who went to a lot of places but never
took a tourist duty. We've worked in Indonesia, but we've never been
to Bali. We were busy doing our special work. I think since the
diagnosis, we have been much more flexible. What are we waiting for?
Let's take an extra day and see this thing, or do that thing. I think
we've done more visiting with family, her sister, my sister and
brother, and our own children. More travel for that kind of purpose
than was our norm before that.
Things change and your plan may change down the road. Just accept it, because you can't change it, all you can do is help it. And if you're really afraid, if you don't know what's going to happen, ask. Say, am I going to die? Are you going to die? If you're eight years old and you don't even have a clue what's going on, find out. Let your parents talk to you. That's what you need to do. Do live your life, but do help them live theirs because it's really tough right now.
You don't really like to give up because you know that you can't
give up. But sometimes you'll be really upset and think: is this over
yet? And you need other people to say, yeah, you're really helping
her out. And Jessica was upset, because Jessica couldn't go to the
hospital and she couldn't take that, and so sometimes she felt like
really weird doing all these things and being so fabulous. And I'm
just sitting here preparing jello for when Mom comes back. But
everything you do is important.
I'm Jessica and I'm her twin sister, and we obviously have the same Mom. Things are quite different for me. I am totally petrified of hospitals, I pass out, I'm not a needle person, which was great. Because even if you don't have a twin sister, there's someone else there who can help you. I did a lot of the stuff, now that I think back, that you just automatically did. I would make her her jello, bring her her cracker trays, whatever she wanted. I did Jennifer's homework if she needed it. I would make sure the lunch money was out for school the next day. A lot of stuff that just needs to get done I would get done. You know, I wasn't up there changing her bandages or whatever. Some of that stuff I just couldn't handle and that's okay, because you don't necessarily have to do anything you don't want to do, but you have to be there and support anyway.
I don't really know what motivated my mom to continue with her
chemo because she had a very hard dosage of chemo. I couldn't imagine
being as sick as my mom and saying yep, three weeks from now I'm
going back in. Going to sit there for a couple of hours and let this
happen to me all over again. It was just really important that my mom
chose to try and put on a happy face sometimes when she was around me
and trying to make the best of it for herself. I would definitely
recommend answering all of your kid's questions, and if you're a kid
asking questions if you're really concerned about anything.
Now that Mom has cancer, I started wondering well exactly how great are the chances of me getting breast cancer. And it seems like the statistics were not exactly what I wanted to hear, but at least I knew. And I guess, you know, they change and they're getting better and more people are living with breast cancer and later on they'll have a completely normal life. But I wanted to know, so when I'm old enough that the doctor suggests that I get a mammogram, I probably will.
Everything's a trial. You can't really mess up. You just learn
from what doesn't work. A lot of the support we got was from our
friends at school. It's important. If you want to tell them, you can
tell them my mom has cancer. They'll say "What can I do to help you?"
Or "Are you okay?" and give you a big hug. And sometimes hugs are all
you need. Sometimes you just need someone to say "Its okay." What you
do is you just try to get along better and get support, you know. If
you see your sister standing at the counter crying, go up to her and
say, hey, I love you. It's going to be okay.
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