Reflecting About My Personal Experience With Cancer
Today I am feeling a little sad…reflecting. I am sure the rain isn’t helping. LOL!
My 5-year-old daughter, Cadey donated her hair to cancer today. I am very proud of her. It was a challenge at times brushing her long hair, but she is tough and she tolerated it (and me!).
I have 2 other daughters that donated their hair June 2009, which leads me to writing this post. Later that day, I learned that my husband had developed tongue cancer. The numbness that I felt at that moment was like nothing that I had ever felt before in my life. I have heard of people that I know having cancer, but to experience it so close to home, certainly puts a different perspective on things. He was only 42 at the time and our 5 kids were ages 4-13.
I remember later that night, I was in the house, still in a state of shock and he was outside playing baseball with our son, happy and laughing and just having a great time. I remember thinking…how could he possibly be so strong? Now, don’t get me wrong, he certainly had his moments of sadness, but he was so strong throughout the whole thing. There were many times that he had to tell me that everything was going to be fine, instead of it being the other way around.
The hardest part was not knowing what the heck the next step was and waiting for answers from the doctors. How do we tell the kids? What caused it? Would he need radiation or chemo? Would he need surgery? Did it spread throughout his body? And most important…would he be a survivor? Not knowing any of these answers was the worst part of it all. But, walking into that cancer center for the first time was awful at the age of 42. What made it worse was that amount of kids that were there. I don’t mean little kids….I am talking about 20 year olds. What the heck is going on in our society for such young people to get cancer?
Carl had an 11-hour surgery at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia in July 2009 and was in the hospital for 8 days. Thank goodness for my parents. They live about 500 miles from us in North Carolina and they stayed with us for about 3 weeks to help with the kids and just everything. The emotional support was especially needed. I went to visit him every single day at that hospital. It was an hour drive each way. It was, at that time, that I was extremely thankful and grateful for network marketing for giving me the freedom to do what I needed to do for my family during this stressful time.
Luckily, no radiation or chemo was needed. Now, he appears to be cancer free and to this day is still healing. We are extremely lucky. As many Doctors that we saw and as many as he still has to see…it is so overwhelming. I can not even imagine going through chemo or radiation…in fact, I just can’t even think about it.
There are days that I completely forget that he even had cancer, but when I hear of people getting it that I now, I immediately feel for them and get upset all over again. Cancer is a horrible disease. The part that really stinks is that now, if Carl has a soar throat for a long period of time or feels anything weird around his mouth or throat, he has to schedule an appt right away. It just stinks because he has to carry this around with him for the rest of his life and always be reminded of this at the age of 43. But, we never forget how lucky we are in so many ways and we got through this together.
Here’s To Your Dreams,




