Lauren Graham - Seriously—Cancer? I Do Not Have Time for This!

SeriouslyCancer?
I Do Not Have Time for This!

Lauren Graham

Copyright 2013 Lauren Graham .

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ISBN: 978-1-4624-0601-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0602-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907424

Printed in the United States of America.

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 6/3/2013

Contents

We had a good thing going. A comfortable, lasting marriage, wonderful kids, a challenging job and lots of friends. What more could anyone ask for? I was proud of the life that we had made and knew that God had been overly generous when pouring His blessings out on us. It seemed as if nothing could hurt us. Until it did. When the tornado in our lives hit, nothing could have prepared us for the fear, the heartache, the shock that we felt.

When Lauren told me that her lymph nodes were swollen in April, I did what I had always done as her mother, went about fixing it. I took her to the doctor, and she prescribed some antibiotics. We went about our normal routines. When the antibiotics were gone but the swollen lymph nodes werent, I knew that something wasnt right. We went back to the doctor who then decided to run some labs and refer us to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. When she made a casual comment in the office about a young woman she had treated who had presented to her with swollen lymph nodes that turned out to be lymphoma, I got angry. I didnt want anything to be wrong with MY daughter, and I didnt want to hear of anything bad. All of my nursing experience and knowledge led me to believe that what was going on with Lauren was not normal, but I wanted to rationalize it into something minor. When we saw the ENT, I tried to convince him that it was probably mono or cat scratch fever. He assured us that it was neither, but gave us a sense of relief when he suggested a wait and see attitude for a probable virus that would run its course.

I was being overly optimistic, probably in denial, that everything was fine. After all, she looked fine, felt fine, and was just her normal self. When more lymph nodes became visibly swollen overnight a couple of weeks later, I started worrying. We went back to the doctor who scheduled a biopsy for that week. It was looking more and more like this was not something that I could fix. The doctor continued to be pretty laid back and assured us by telling us that he felt that it was going to be viral. When he returned from the surgery, he dropped the bomb. He said that the pathologist was giving him no good news. He said that there were only two possibilities - autoimmune disease or lymphoma. I was in shock. I started bargaining with God, praying for an autoimmune disease. I couldnt imagine my daughter having cancer. How would we deal with something like this? How could I face the possibility of losing her? Because Lauren was sedated after the surgery, the doctor didnt tell her what he found. We went home, and I told Robert that we couldnt talk about the possibilities. I guess I thought that if we didnt talk about it, it wouldnt be real. I didnt want to scare her, and I was too scared myself to let myself talk out loud about it. That Saturday night, I finally told Lauren what it looked like we were facing. She surprised me when she said, I hope that it is lymphoma and not an autoimmune disease. I was shocked to hear this. Cancer was a life-threatening disease. I had just lost my grandmother to lung cancer five months earlier. In my mind, cancer was just too scary to face. When I asked her why, she said, Because if it is cancer, there is a possibility that it can be cured. If it is an autoimmune disease, I will deal with it the rest of my life. That was the beginning of the fighting attitude that would sustain her through this challenge.

The following Monday, the doctor called and said that he had a diagnosis. It was Memorial Day, so the office was closed. He said that he would be waiting there for us. Lauren and I went by ourselves. He came right out and said, Do you want the good news or the bad news first? I braced myself, knowing that our lives would forever be changed in this moment. He said, You have a nasty disease, but it can be cured. But only with an all-out, full-court press, MD Anderson, the whole bit. He went on to tell us that the diagnosis was T- cell precursor lymphoblastic lymphoma. That might as well have been a foreign language to us, but a language that we would quickly come to understand and speak ourselves.

Tragedy affects many families. Mine had been no different. All of my grandparents gone and most of them after months or years of serious illnesses. My brother killed accidently at age 19. My biological father taken much too soon the month before I was born. I guess all of these things in my life prepared me for what would transpire. The examples set before me by my parents as they dealt with the care giving duties for their parents through serious illness, the loss of their son, and the loss of their spouses made them stronger. I always looked on tragedies such as these with sympathy. I thought about how hard it must be to deal with things almost too hard to face. I thought I could empathize with them. I now know that before this experience, I had no clue as to how hard it can be to deal with serious illness in someone you love, especially your child. It completely turns your life upside down. It allows you no control. It scares the life out of you. It makes you physically sick. Someone you love more than yourself is seriously ill, and you can do nothing to stop it. You are not able to go back to the days where illness was not an issue. You would take it all on yourself if only you could. Your heart aches for the pain and suffering that you see your loved one go through. People cannot understand how you feel, but they can help. Many helped us. They helped us with their prayers; they helped us with shoulders to cry on; they helped us with the financial burden that this placed on us. They went out of their way to be there for us, whatever it took. It is still amazing to me how many angels are out there. All of them sent by God to provide for us what we needed when we needed it. Things we didnt even know to ask for, God provided before we realized that we needed them.

We can now look back and see how this experience has changed our lives. We still have a good life, in fact, a great life. We have a Mighty God who knows our prayers before we pray them. He has known every step of the way what would happen to Lauren. As scary as each treatment, ER visit, hospitalization, and surgery was, He has brought her through each one of them safely. He has given us all strength to do what we had to do. He has calmed our fears when we cried out. He has directed our path when we didnt know what to do. He has allowed us to wake up each day ready to face whatever we have to, even when the day might be scary.