In 1992 my mom was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. I was 19. At first I thought OK, not a big deal it is JUST breast cancer (naive 19 year old me).
I was in the hospital when my mom woke up from surgery, and it was the first time she REALLY knew it was cancer. She was under general anesthetic for the biopsy, and she had consented to have her breast removed if it was cancer, so she woke to see her breast was missing. It was the first time I saw my mom cry.
She was amazing through her recovery, and in a few months she started her chemo treatments. She was SO sick. I had never seen my mom this sick. I was just counting the days until it was done, and she could move on and no longer be sick... again naive 19 year old me.
She didn't have reconstructive surgery (she was advised against it at the time... ), so she learned to live with a prosthetic. She was very self conscious about it at first, but it became just life. We all waited anxiously every time she had her check up, hoping that the cancer was gone, and then that it did not come back.
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| my sisters and I with friends at the CIBC Run for the Cure |
This was the case for 18 years. My mom was one of the survivors, so we started running the CIBC Run for the Cure, for her. She wore her pink survivors shirt, and every year refused to have her picture taken.
This changed last January. After months of complaining of severe pain in her left leg my mom was sent for a series of tests, the doctors found what was causing all of the pain. My mom had a tumor in her left femur. A biopsy revealed that she had bone cancer; a pathology test later revealed that it was the same cancer she had 18 years earlier.
A
few weeks after her diagnosis, my mother was scheduled for an enbloc
excision of the left proximal femur with an oncology prosthesis. This
was the medical term that meant my mom would have to have the top half
of her femur detached from her hip and then removed from her leg; it was
replaced with a titanium prosthetic rod that was screwed back into her
hip and the remaining lower half of her femur.
We are so thankful that
the surgery was a success and they were able to remove all of the
cancer.
My mom then had to endure months of physiotherapy to re-learn how to
stand, sit and walk; it was an extremely painful process through which
she has shown tremendous strength, courage and resiliency.
My
mom's cancer diagnoses have shown me first-hand just how important it is to
fund cancer research. The surgery she had last year is very rare and
would not have been an option for her 18 years ago.
