sixteen
Today’s edition was scheduled a few weeks in advance, so hopefully it goes out on time!
Provided I didn’t mess up the scheduling, you should be reading this on Tuesday, Jan. 26. What’s so important about this date? It marks the 16th “cancerversary” my family has celebrated; one that’s now old enough to go gets its driver’s license.
In honor of today’s milestone, I decided to do a little research and go back in time to the year 2005; a year that was strangely eventful. Not just because of the big “C,” but because it’s also the year I started high school; the year I went to my first sleepaway camp; the year that my dad was deployed to Africa (and subsequently, the year I saw him more than other years when he was on active duty).
So. How does one go back in time? That’s where the internet comes in handy, because as we all know, the internet is forever, especially if you know where to look. Xanga might not exist as a tangential blogging platform anymore, but if you’ve got a Wordpress site, you can download your archives into the CMS and relive all of those tragic teenage years.
“But Meghin, why would you want to relive some of your worst years? Wasn’t experiencing the world as a teenager hard enough?”
Well, yes. But my antiquated archives allow a glimpse into a year in the life of someone whose entire world was turned upside down. I’m amazed that I wrote about things that I did (which would include everything you’d expect to see from a teenage girl, including the “hott” boys seen in public!), and that I wrote about them in such detail in such an incredibly public forum.
Thanks to (then undiagnosed) ADHD, the ability to be relatively detail-oriented and the life of an Extremely Online Gal, I was able to piece together an interesting portrait of what 2005 looked like from (mostly) start to finish.
January 2005: My mom’s official diagnosis date was Jan. 26. However, she didn’t tell the family on the day she found out the news. In fact, on Jan. 27, 2005, I wrote about how excited I was that my dad was going to come home for a visit. At that time, he was stationed in Tampa, and had been flying between there and Pennsylvania from his initial deployment in 2002.
Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary about him coming home.
February: On Feb. 1, I was helping my mom move some shelving into my brother’s room and I accidentally broke her foot. I broke the news of her broken foot on Feb. 2, where I mentioned she was still mobile and able to use a walking cast for about 7-10 days.
My dad came home on Friday, Feb. 4; a day that I was home sick with a fever. I was supposed to be job shadowing for my careers class that day and I was getting ready to take the SAT the next day. That’s the day that my mom told the family about her cancer. As it turns out, she had already told the teachers at my middle school and my brother’s elementary school, so they’d be prepared for well…everything.
In typical “melodramatic teen” fashion, I took to my blog and typed out “i dont think she will die..so thats good.”
(I mean, she’s still here 16 years later!)
She told us that she was slated to find out her treatment plan on Feb. 7, which initially included surgery (a partial mastectomy) and radiation. The partial mastectomy was performed on Feb. 10, and on Feb. 15 the family got good news: it was caught early enough that it didn’t spread.
After the public announcement, my mom had the idea to ask my friends to name her cancer. Many names were submitted, but only one won out: The Unforgettable Dot.
March: My mom had a bone scan and a CT scan on March 4, just to triple-check that the cancer didn’t spread beyond her left breast. Three days after that, I turned 14. One of my birthday presents that year was a giant stuffed hippo…one that I jokingly told my mom I wanted while we were in a drug store. 16 years later and that hippo is still an honorary member of my family.
On March 15, the family got the news that my mom would have to undergo some rounds of chemotherapy as well.
Ahead of her chemo sessions, she made plans for a group of friends and I to stay in a hotel in Lancaster for a big birthday blowout weekend. It was a good distraction ahead of what was to come.
April: On April 9, my mom told me that there were plans to move to Florida that summer, ahead of me starting high school (and my brother starting middle school). The move would’ve allowed us to be closer to my dad in Tampa. However, that move got put on hold (and ultimately cancelled) because of her cancer. She wanted to keep her support system in Pennsylvania, as well as her doctors at the Hershey Medical Center.
She started her first round of chemo on April 12. My aunt (her sister) drove up from D.C. to help her through it all, since my dad wasn’t home and my brother and I weren’t old enough to drive yet. It was the first of four sessions; three of which I definitely blogged about. After each of her chemo sessions, she’d get a Neulasta injection to help her white blood cell counts.
Once she had started chemo, she told my brother and I that she’d be shaving her head. That happened on April 21. I’m pretty sure she still has some of her hair from that day somewhere in the house. My brother didn’t want her to go out in public without a scarf or hat, and my mom just wasn’t a wig person. I didn’t care, and she ended up rocking a hat/scarf combo to chaperone the Spring Fling dance for the eighth graders. People thought she was so cool for going out in public like that, and surprisingly, there were still folks in my eighth grade class who didn’t know about her breast cancer!
Her next chemo treatment was on April 26, followed by a third one on May 10. Did I end up blogging about her fourth and final round? Surprisingly, no.
May: May was a whirlwind of a month. Mentally and physically, it was taxing on my mom and the family. We missed out on Relay For Life that year because she was not feeling well at all. Around May 20, she ended up back in the hospital for something, but she absolutely did not want to miss the premiere of the Muppet Wizard of Oz with my brother and I…so we watched it in her tiny hospital room.
June: This marked the end of an era, as I said goodbye to middle school. On June 2, while I was out at the annual 8th grade retreat at a local camp, my mom passed out and hit her head. Thankfully, she only had a bump on her head and only hurt her shoulder a little bit. It was dehydration.
My mom had a beach trip planned for the family in the middle of the month. She still had her port for chemo, and she was slated to start some radiation treatments that month/early July.
July: Some normalcy started to return to the family. I was in the throes of summer reading for an honors English course, while my brother was out and about at various camps. Tennis lessons were starting for me, to help me prepare for my first season as a high school student-athlete. And of course, I went to my first sleepaway camp that summer at Shippensburg University. It was hard to be away from my mom as she went through some radiation treatments, but that’s what phone calls were for!
In a hilarious turn of events, my mom and my brother ended up logging onto my blog and posted for me while I was at summer camp, thus proving that no matter what platform you’re on, there are always ways to post embarrassingly hilarious things without your knowledge.
August: My mom’s radiation treatments were still continuing, while I was preparing to start high school. Apparently things were really returning to normal, as I blogged about having my internet privileges taken away by my mom.
She planned a big trip for my brother and I that summer to go to Baltimore, despite still going through radiation treatments. She took us to a hotel right on the harbor and we were able to see The Lion King musical. For a split second, it was like nothing had changed; it was just three family members out on the town enjoying themselves.
This was also the month that the family was preparing for my dad to go to Africa for a year, thus bringing us all back into the reality that life goes on, with or without cancer.
September: This is the month where I finally purchased a CD of Jack’s Mannequin’s “Everything In Transit,” after listening to it post-release using Windows Media Player. This album in particular helped me get through most of the events of 2005. It is one of those albums that I will be eternally grateful for.
Between my brother’s drumming and tennis games, to overly dramatic fights with my mom about uninstalling AIM from the family computer, all seemed well…normal again. On Sept. 25, my dad left for Africa for a year, while on Sept. 29, my mom “got into a fight with a Twinkie.” This was the first time she’d referenced her post-cancer weight gain due to her maintenance drugs. Over the summer, she’d joked that she wanted to gain weight instead of losing it.
October: This was the month that truly kicked off a high schooler’s rite of passage: Homecoming. It was also the month where the family realized just how much of an impact my mom’s weakened immune system had. She caught a cold on Oct. 5, but thankfully recovered a few days later without any issue. She took my brother and I out to Philly, where we ended up shopping for homecoming shoes.
October also marked a milestone for my brother, as he attended his first middle school dance. Admittedly, after the year we’d all had, it was nice to have my mom available to help out with the dances and to see us off.
November: 2005 was the year my mom turned 50. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer at 49, which was still relatively young in the scheme of things. The whole family had a lot to be thankful for that year, even if the family wasn’t together. After all, family is what you make it. It doesn’t always have to be through blood.
On a light note, I did blog on her birthday about how she was the “Crab-Of-The-World-who-just-happens-to-be-50-today.” (Sorry mom)
December: On Dec. 9, my mom, my brother and I had a family movie night. We watched The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. After the year we’d been through, it was a good movie to watch, even if it made my brother cry.
In an effort to help us return to even more normalcy, my mom enlisted us to help her with the Toys for Tots drive, which became an annual tradition until the family moved to Virginia. My dad was still overseas, and it was nice to gather with a community of people helping others in need.
2005 was an interesting year, to say the least, and now, we’re here in 2021. The past sixteen years have been filled with love, heartbreak, life lessons and more. If I had a time machine to go back and revisit 2005, I’d probably tell younger me that everything would end up okay in the end.
Making it through that first year was a major accomplishment. Hitting five years in remission was a milestone we all celebrated, followed by ten and fifteen years; years where there was always a worry a relapse would happen and we’d have to start the process all over again. And here we are. Year 16. What a wild ride it’s been.