Raise Your Glass - Pink

And I’m happy to report that my baby, First Daughter is cancer and TUMOR FREE!  It’s a wonderful feeling after so much waiting and wondering and then worrying.  I’m sure there are stories like this every day, even with rare tumors like the one she had, (1% chance of getting this kind of tumor where she got it)  but unfortunately most of us only hear about the really scary ones, the ones that aren’t success stories.  And I just want to go on record for saying there is so much joy in a happy ending to a cancer scare.  And I think that we should discuss and spread the tales of happy outcomes rather than sad ones.

She is moving, but slowly, and gets her stitches out on Thursday.  I saw the scar or what might become a scar for the first time last night as I helped her change her dressing.  Being mirror challenged as some of us are, she was afraid to do it herself, and then the little girl in her came spilling up to the surface as she looked at me with her big blue eyes and said, “and  I’m a little afraid to see it.”  To which I completely understood because as her mother, I was A LOT afraid to see it.  But together, like Alice in Wonderland, we faced are fears together, and it was not as bad as we had imagined.  Although the stitches are the heavy duty Frankenstein kind of stitches that are designed to keep all your internal stuff inside.  Not the little baby stitches I’ve seen before or had.  This viewing of her wound has made it all again much too real what my baby had to endure for the last few weeks.

But she has inherited her mother’s sense of humor, as she relayed to me last night at dinner, “One of my co-workers said, ‘Oh when are you wrong?’ and I replied, ‘Well, I thought this (tumor) was a muscle strain…..’ I thought that was funny but it was greeted with complete silence, so I took a pause, and said, ‘…too soon?’”  I laughed with her that yes, that was definitely my way of approaching real fear, humor and laughter.  And I’ve been told by best friends and professionals that is the best way.  I guess being a nervous laugher has some benefits.

I hope all your cancer scares are as successful as my daughters and that you never have to go through what she has gone through only to find out the worst possible outcome.  She was and is so brave and I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, “She is everything I ever wanted to be, and she blew right through me…Ya Ya!”

Cheers