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Happy Day; this one’s ours.
Like all holidays, it feels a bit bittersweet. A reminder of good times but also bad.
Four years ago I took my first dose of lorlatinib (image from that momentous occasion shown above). Several days later I started coughing up specks of blood. By the morning of day six, my hemoptysis was significant enough that Dr. Shaw asked me to come to MGH for an emergency CT scan just to rule out a pulmonary embolism.
As I was getting ready to go to the hospital, a call came in from Utah, where my mother and stepfather lived. It wasn’t yet daybreak there so I knew something must be wrong. My stepfather was on the other end of the line and he began to cry as he told me that my mother, Evalynn, had passed away in the night.
Mom, gone.
I fought back tears and panic both as I drove the hour into Boston. My daughter met me at the hospital and when the tech emerged post scan I jokingly asked ‘so is my cancer all gone?’ No, but almost. And the blood? Likely a result of rapid tumor necrosis.
And then my heart broke because the person I wanted to call first was no longer here.
However, grief was side by side with joy: I was going to have more time to spend with my three children; Jemesii, August and Peter. Being a mom is the one thing that keeps me going no matter what—my raison d’être.
In three weeks one of my (now adult) children will be moving back in with me. The reality is, he still needs his mother. And I am absolutely thrilled that I have the privilege of being here. For him. For me. For life.
life and breath: outliving lung cancer 