Parenting Through

As I sit here reflecting (in the thirty minutes that I’ve luxuriously set aside for writing today), I have been trying to imagine what my recovery would be like if I wasn’t a mom. Do not misunderstand me – my children have been an enormous reason for my quick recovery and my ongoing will to survive – but I have a sense that the average cancer patient with young children goes "back to work” a lot sooner than the ones without children.

I will give you an example of what I mean. For the first two months after my bone marrow transplant, I slept until at least eight o’clock every morning. I had a nap every day, then I walked, wrote, read books, watched movies… sometimes I even managed some yoga or strength work. For the most part, I was a total sloth, and I needed to be. When the chemo and radiation are strong to almost kill you, well, they really do almost kill you. I spent as much time as I could with the kids, but after a while their noise and enthusiasm exhausted me and back to bed I went. I could afford to rest this much only because we had a full-time nanny and my parents were in town helping out (bless their exhausted hearts).

Those of you who are cancer survivors may be familiar with this phrase: “For the next year, recovery is your full-time job.”

Well… I hate to break it my doc, but starting two and half months post-transplant, when my nanny went back to school and my mom flew home, parenting became my full-time job. The doctors are very firm about not “working,” but they say nothing about parenting. And in my opinion, chasing after two energetic munchkins for ten hours every day is a lot more demanding than sitting at a desk for eight hours (and I’m not just ranting, I’ve done both. This is a very scientific comparison.)

So, even with part-time nanny help that breaks the bank, I am now up at six thirty every day. I make breakfast, pack lunches, sweep floors, put away toys, read books, end squabbles, drive to preschool, take the kids on nature walks, go to museums, go to the library, do laundry, make dinner and much, much more. I even made detailed spider and mummy cookies for my son's preschool Halloween party, and upon arrival realized that I had made the most elaborate cookies of the bunch. Now, I realize this is par for the course for any stay-at-home mom, but it isn’t for a recovering bone marrow recipient. There is not much room for “recovery” in this routine.

And let's add this little vignette: my son goes to a cooperative preschool, which means that each parent has a “duty day” every month. On this day, the parent is at the preschool for the whole three hours helping out. The duty parent must also bring the snack, serve it and clean it up, and then clean up the whole preschool (vacuum, sweep, bathrooms, etc.) at the end of the day. So there I was last week, exhausted from another night of insomnia, playing with a room full of four-year-olds, and then strapping my daughter to my back so that I could do all the cleaning afterward. I don’t even clean my own house right now, but there I was sweeping up sparkly sand with a twenty-five pound toddler on my back. One of the other moms, a kind soul who vaguely knows what I’ve been through, stayed with me and helped sweep. I must have looked as exhausted as I felt, despite trying to keep a brave and happy face.

I say this all not to complain – Lord knows there are people that have it tougher than I do. I do not, for example, have to cross the raging Mekong river on a precarious tightrope to catch dinner for my family (we’ve been watching a lot of BBC’s Human Planet around here). I simply share my stories to illustrate how different “recovery” looks when you have young children. I am sure there are thousands of women out there who have done the same. We are all “back at work” much earlier than the doctors prescribe, but it is rarely recognized as such.

Perhaps what I am not seeing is the recovery borne out of necessity. Perhaps if I were still allowed to sit around and watch movies all day, I would feel sort of listless and maybe even a little depressed at my lack of usefulness. Instead, there is little time for whining or even much self-reflection in my day. I am needed. I am wanted. I am busy. I often forget that I am in recovery and then become frustrated when I am so tired by the afternoon. In the brief respites I do have, I’m either napping or looking up recipes that might appeal to my ever-pickier four-year-old. By the time the kids are in bed, I flop on the couch like a fish that gave up fighting the net. Thank God I have an amazing husband who does all the clean up in the evenings. Otherwise we would all be neck-deep in dirty dishes, crumbs and leftovers, and, most likely, mice. No thanks.

Of course, while there are many days when I am proud of my ability to “parent through,” I do worry that the lack of adequate rest will affect my recovery. Like any cancer survivor, I am plagued daily with a fear that those nasty rogue cells will come back. I then fantasize a recovery without children, where I could get the rest I need – sleeping in, leisurely runs every day, hours to write, daily yoga, endless movies and novels…. It seems like heaven. Until I realize that in this scenario my children would never be there. You just can’t have it both ways.

The fact is, my kids give me the most powerful reason to live. And even though my son literally never stops talking, and my tiny daughter thinks it’s hilarious to smack me in the face, and even though the two of them can make a mess faster than you can say Tasmanian devil, I still would not trade places with a childless survivor for a second.

Well, maybe for second. Ok, maybe just for one day. But then I want them back.