FIGHTING BACK: Doing Battle with Cancer, the website and the blog, is a collection of personal essays about managing our lives, the tragedies that sometimes befall us, and the in-between times that leave us marked by the joy of the moment.
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I don’t remember my mother. She died suddenly one Saturday night in March while my parents were at the home of friends. Her name was Edna. She was 40 years old. I was 9 1/2. My dad woke me late that Saturday night—I had been sleeping at Granny’s, my mother’s mother. His arms tight around…
¨Ed and I worked hard. We had no options. Our major medical had maxed out at $20,000—that was gone in an eye’s blink—and the slew of doctor and hospital bills on the corner of Ed’s desk showed no signs of diminishing. Besides that, there was the need to eat. Our new company, E & S…
Traffic into New York City had been bumper to bumper. I was late. Valerie, my five-year-old, was in Babies Hospital one month after her last chemo. It was January 12, 1972, the date marking the end of two long, difficult years of shock and turmoil for my small family. This time, her checkup was for…
Valerie and her radiation-damaged leg needed a new home. Her limp was worsening and our North Plainfield bi-level had two sets of stairs. Each time Val went downstairs to play in the rec room, I had to trust to the gods that she wouldn’t trip. We needed a house with fewer or no steps. In…
One week after our talk with Dr. Wolff about Val’s amputation, we were back in the hospital. Surgery was scheduled for the next morning. The children had been told only that Valerie had to stay at Babies for a few days. Ed said, “The bad cells in your leg aren’t completely gone, sweetheart. You need…
Two days after the surgery that removed her right leg above the knee a physical therapist came into the hospital room to show Val how to use crutches. She could have saved the trip. Squirming around a bit, my six-year-old waited for her to finish, then put the crutches under her arms and took off…
The big question for me? Should we continue building in Warren after Valerie’s amputation or should we sell the half-finished house and remain in North Plainfield? The stressors kept building. We did have the option of selling. One couple drove by the Warren site in a fancy car and offered us a great price. “Let’s…
A pleasant calm prevailed after we moved into our new home. Valerie’s prosthesis became simply another fact of life and all but disappeared from our everyday vision and conversation. I took care of the house, cooked, did the bookkeeping. Ed sold kitchen cabinets and sundry items and the new office, recently located outside the house,…
The months passed peacefully or, at least, relatively so. Ed, Val and I would go back to Babies Hospital every three months for Valerie’s oncology checkups. That was always a bit of an upheaval as that trip had us all on edge. But Valerie was seven by then and maturing. Somewhat behind emotionally but the…
Val was home: the lung surgery behind us; the stress of her hospital stay over; the Jewish holidays ended. But I continued to brood over the ‘remove the lung’ discussion with Dr. Wolff. Although Valerie’s right leg was amputated above the knee one and one-half years ago to stop the spread of her cancer, it…