Name: When mom got cancer, I tried smiling and pretending everything was OK. That didn’t help.
Brand: dallasnews.com
SKU: dallasnews-com-127
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

When mom got cancer, I tried smiling and pretending everything was OK. That didn’t help.

preview

1:30 AM on Jul 5, 2020 CDTFor a long time, cancer was the unnamed elephant in the room for my family.Last August, I packed my bags in Dallas and said goodbye to my co-workers two weeks before my internship was scheduled to end. My eyes were puffy from days of sporadic crying that I failed miserably to hide, and a buried anxiety set in as I prepared to confront the greatest challenge my family would face.My mind tried desperately to normalize my family’s new circumstances, but the unsettling fact remained: My mom was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver, and I was heading home to El Paso to help her before school started.At the time I knew it was too early, too pessimistic, to allow myself to think negatively despite the gloomy odds I had memorized through frantic Google searches. I told myself I’d do all I could to summon smiles and positivity, and to normalize the abnormal in any way possible. I figured doing so was the best way we could help my mom win this fight.But after COVID-19 shut down America seven months later, I learned that routines and optimism don’t always work.One of the first reactions my mom, and my family, grappled with after she first received her cancer diagnosis was denial. She initially asked us not to tell others about her condition, and she at times tried to shield my sisters and I from information that might hurt us.But cancer, I learned, is indiscriminate and unpredictable. And over the next few months, I struggled with the knowledge that it had struck my family as I tried to carry on at school 1,500 miles from home.At times I found myself crying uncontrollably at night if I even thought about my mom fighting for her life thousands of miles away. My motivation to complete schoolwork dropped as my priorities shifted. Paranoia sowed itself into the deepest corners of my mind, where hope and fear were tangled into an emotional mess.For the first time in my life, I couldn’t see my mom for Thanksgiving break because a contagious cold I caught at school was too risky. When I was healthy and could see her weeks later, I internalized the helplessness I felt watching her buckle over in pain from time to time, knowing there was nothing I could do to lessen her suffering.Rather than let my mom continue living alone at home, as was the case before her cancer was diagnosed, my sisters, grandma, aunts and I followed a rotating schedule to ensure someone was with her at all times. She shut down her law practice, cutting off the flow of income that had previously cushioned her. Medical bills racked up and her weight dropped 20 pounds.As my mom called on incredible strength to keep attending chemo sessions, to keep spirits high and to keep fighting for her and for us, I questioned my strength as a source of support for her. I felt random waves of guilt at my helplessness at school while my sisters and aunts scrambled to coordinate travel plans.And then COVID-19 struck.Once the pandemic reached America, isolation suddenly became critical for those like my mom who were most at risk. I flew home to be with her once my university moved to virtual instruction in March. I immediately quarantined myself for two weeks before seeing her.Right away, I realized my family could no longer operate on our rotating schedule.Just like all of America, our reality — however new — was disrupted.Related:Once I was with her, I noticed the El Paso Oncology Center, where my mom spends every other Wednesday receiving chemotherapy, had also smartly altered its operations to allow for social distancing and to prevent potential exposure.Now, my mom and I spend an unpredictable amount of time waiting in the car outside the oncology center after she alerts the front desk to her arrival. About an hour or two later, she’s called by phone to enter the center. Rather than accompanying her inside as usual, I watch as she saunters in alone before I drive away and come back about six hours later.But the last few times I went with her, there was an uneasy feeling that erupted inside of me as I watched her walk off to sit alone in a socially distant chair for chemo — and that’s when I slowly began to question the best ways of being a true support.“There’s a myth out there that thinking positively cures cancer, and what we often hear from patients is that they’re not able to process their emotions because they get shut down by well-meaning people,” Dr. Shawna Ehlers, an associate professor and psychologist at Mayo Clinic, told me in a telephone interview. “We certainly don’t want people to get stuck in those fearful thoughts, we want them to process them and to challenge them a bit.”For the longest time, I believed normalizing the abnormal and speaking positively with a plastered smile on my face were the ways I could be the greatest help. When I struggled to do so, ironically because I myself wasn’t processing my emotions, I only did a disservice to all involved. Ehlers said it’s a phenomenon called the “tyranny of positive thinking.”But as COVID-19 highlights every day, now is as important a time as ever to be the exact opposite, instead opening a supportive space for others to process their emotions as we all encounter a difficult time.With the cancer patients, I noticed not only are most patients now prohibited from bringing a loved one to chemo, but the community that patients can form among themselves has also been disrupted, as schedules are altered and machines sit further apart.No longer can my mom chat away with the patients who became friends and familiar to her over time. No longer can she laugh with them about things to which only they can relate, or schedule days to go wig shopping or check up with each other face-to-face every other week.The group seemed to have a language among themselves that only they could fully understand — one that’s been overhauled by COVID-19.“What I usually tell patients is we can offer them great professional support and guidance, but people who’ve actually been through cancer can provide a different type of support, peer support, and an understanding that nobody else can really provide because they’ve lived through something similar,” Ehlers told me.This support is just as vital as other types of help, and it’s important that support networks recognize that when such networks are lacking, cancer patients can be both emotionally and physically impacted.Since I’ve mulled over these realizations, I frequently find myself thinking back to that day in August when my mom’s cancer was diagnosed. Just a few weeks before, cancer was the furthest thing on any of my family member’s minds. We were all focused on our own lives; me, on my final year in college. My sisters, on being promoted in their jobs. My aunts, on providing for their own sons and daughters.Similarly, just a few days before COVID-19 forced my university’s campus to close, I’d begun settling into my final semester of college and thinking about my next steps. I was preparing to celebrate the last two months of the school year, excitedly planning for graduation parties, senior year traditions and the memories that would be etched into our minds forever.But then, suddenly and unexpectedly, my reality in both situations was disrupted — and there were two primary ways I could look at it.I could process it with those I trust or who went through a similar experience, as I did when COVID-19 altered graduation plans, or I could internalize and bottle my emotions, falling into the “tyranny of positive thinking” trap as I did with my mom’s diagnosis.We can never predict the obstacles life will throw at us. Whether it’s COVID-19 or a loved one having cancer or any other disruption, it’s more important than ever to recognize our true priorities — and to find ways to support each other even if our usual methods are impossible.For the medical community, that might even mean a transition to video conferencing instead of in-person check-ups for certain appointments.“One of the silver linings that we might bring out of the pandemic is a push for telehealth,” Ehlers told me. “It’s, of course, a lot, not being able to bring in with you who you want to [during the pandemic], but [it’s also] a place where we can think creatively and not only help people adjust to the pandemic precautions, but reach people who don’t have as good [health care] access.”By all counts and measures, cancer uprooted my family members’ lives. But it was a fight we pledged to wage together in any way we could, rather than leave my mom to suffer it alone.And with COVID-19, I realized being a source of strength can mean having conversations in which we can openly process emotions, especially for those most afflicted. It means tackling tough questions and realities, making hard sacrifices and being truthful with each other above all.With my mom’s diagnosis or a pandemic like COVID-19, sometimes it helps just to be a face at your loved one’s side through her toughest moments or hardest realizations.That face doesn’t always have to be smiling, but it has to make an effort to listen and be there.Kelli Smith is a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a former Dallas Morning News intern. Editorial and commentary from op-ed columnists, the editorial board and contributing writers from The Dallas Morning News, delivered three days a week.By signing up you agree to our

1:30 AM on Jul 5, 2020 CDTFor a long time, cancer was the unnamed elephant in the room for my family.Last August, I packed my bags in Dallas and said goodbye to my co-workers two weeks before my internship was scheduled to end. My eyes were puffy from days of sporadic crying that I failed miserably to hide, and a buried anxiety set in as I prepared to confront the greatest challenge my family would face.My mind tried desperately to normalize my family’s new circumstances, but the unsettling fact remained: My mom was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized to...

When mom got cancer, I tried smiling and pretending everything was OK. That didn’t help.

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS