Who I Became After My Daughter Was Diagnosed With Cancer

“The only thing I can do is be June’s mom. I am just June’s mom.”

Our daughter June began chemotherapy when she was eight-months-old to treat a highly aggressive pediatric cancer called neuroblastoma. After her diagnosis, slowly, slowly, gone, went my identity. I became no one to society. I still had my nursing license, but I’d stopped working the day we found out June had cancer.

I could feel myself vanishing, recoiling, receding, retreating into the depths of the few new places I lived: my brain, the car, the house. Repeat. I’d spread my time between those three places, alternating, so if I was in one, I’d be escaping the other.

After June was diagnosed, I couldn’t escape the torture of my brain, however. It proved impossible. I was a walking brain. My older daughter would say something to me, and an automated response would come out of my mouth with complete disregard for the posed question or phrase. It had to be a vague response for it to work every time, so it was usually something like “Okay,” “Yeah,” or “Sure.” A word that took little time and energy to spit out. One that allowed me to continue to live in my brain and stay the new path of being solely June’s mom.

A flippant response allowed me more mental energy to think about the next steps in June’s process. The next bit of nurturing she needed, or medication that was due. It allowed me to anticipate her every waking need, which I had decided was my job as June’s mom. My sick baby would never want or need for anything. That I could control.

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I quickly learned several mechanisms to escape the wrath of my brain which I included in my everyday life. The treadmill and a bottle of red wine became two other locations on the list of places I now lived. I was branching out.

Not long after this discovery, I realized how much relief these things brought me daily which made them both the more appealing and more dangerous places to live. They were lonely, but so was I, so desperately lonely. Together we made good company, and although they only lasted the duration I was doing them, it added up to about three hours a day of half-quality, half-quantity relief.

June was diagnosed May 25, 2021. By the month of June, I learned what it was like to spread my time out to the car. Our oldest daughter would be at daycare and June would be napping. I’d walk down the stairs to the garage in my pajamas at one o’clock in the afternoon, get in the car and start it, open the garage door, and drive out like I was going somewhere.

I’d park the car to face the woods, the road, or the neighbors house. I’d attempt not to face the neighbors house, unless I was totally out of my mind and unaware of what I was doing as I was parking. Most times I was out of my mind. Out of my mind isn’t an accurate description however because I was very much in my mind, and out of my body. Something I’d later figure out was a common theme. Something I learned to distinguish.

I realized the chaos roaring inside of June’s little body was teaching me so much about my own. It was nearly impossible to be in both my body and brain at the same time, or even one of them, at one time. After June was diagnosed, I spent most days free falling from the ethers, waking up to find myself in the car, the house, but rarely the brain.

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I’d sit for hours a week in the driveway, car running, dousing the planet with exhaust, crying. The ability for me to care about things that mattered before June got sick, like the planet, was none. I’d blast music, and I’d scream and I’d cry.

I’d hit my hands off the steering wheel and curse God. If it was going to be one of those days, I made sure I was facing the woods. I’d grip the steering wheel so hard I thought I might rip the leather off of it, or worse, take the entire wheel. I didn’t care. My cry was animalistic, hysteric, hopeless.

I’d only make the call to the social worker once I’d let out enough of the bear. Once I was sure I wasn’t going to scare her, but not one second more because I couldn’t tolerate being by myself for another moment. I knew if I was scaring myself, I’d scare her. I’d get her on the phone and when she answered I’d say “Hi, how are you today?” in a foreign high-pitched cracked voice.

Pretending. Pretending I didn’t just have the meltdown of the century in my driver’s seat, sitting in my driveway, screaming at the leaves on the trees, ripping the steering wheel in every direction like some rabid, psychotic raccoon.

The second she’d say, “I’m okay, how are you doing?” Cue meltdown number two. But this one was different. It was softer. It was heavy, hot tears without the screams. It was despair. I’d already released the anger. All that was left to come out was hopelessness.

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June — photo by author

When you live in the bottomless bucket of hopelessness, what do you do? I’ll tell you. You claw your way out of that sucker because if you don’t, you’ll drown in that bucket void of hope, void of anything. You will drown in nothing but your own brain. The deprivation of hope will kill you. The only sure way out of the bucket of hopelessness is to fill it with hope. So, from the black unholy hole of hopelessness, I desperately started feeling around, for hope.

I’d ask the social worker the same questions every time we spoke, “Do children with the same diagnosis as June’s go on to live? Can kids beat this type of cancer? Where are the other moms? Do you know any other moms that are going through this too? Can you ask them if they would be open to speaking with me? Is June going to die?” which was a rhetorical question because she didn’t have a crystal ball, nor was she a doctor delivering a prognosis, so without allowing her to respond, I’d say, “I don’t know how I will continue living if June dies.” Then I’d push the button on my car door that moves my seat as far back as it can go, and pull my one-hundred pound feet onto the seat, and cry into my knees.

Pause. Then I’d continue, “I feel like I’ve lost my identity. I am no one anymore. I have no interests. I have no more hobbies. I can barely parent my oldest daughter. I’m definitely no longer a wife. The only thing I can do is be June’s mom. I am just June’s mom.”

“Be just June’s mom,” she told me, “that’s all you have to be right now.”

With life on hold, our conversations went like this every week, several times a week, for months, until we made it through the first four rounds of chemotherapy. Then came the first trickle of hope almost filling my entire bucket: the tumors had shrunk.