A Message from Ali – Back in the Battle Against Cancer Again

This isn’t about childhood cancer, but I thought you might like to read Ali’s beautiful tribute to her Mom as she shares some unexpected news.

Ali here…

Thank you for all of the congratulatory messages.  I’m really blessed to have been offered 4 doctoral acceptances and the opportunity to choose which school would be the best fit for me.

This news couldn’t have come at a better time for our family.  In weeks of sadness and fear, this was the glimmer of exciting news and the pick me up we needed.

The night before I was to head down to Washington DC for a graduate school interview at George Washington University, we found out my mom has cancer.  Can you believe it? We certainly can’t…

Fast forward a week from finding out and my dad and I are once again sitting in a hospital waiting room, desperately waiting for the surgeon to come out and update us on my mom’s surgery.  The thoughts flying through my head, faster than I could even process them, were terrifying.  Did they remove the tumors?  Did she make it through ok?  That call over the loud speaker for the Rapid Response team to report to room 4B…is that where she is?  Is she ok?  Do they realize how important this patient is to our family?

In case the doctors weren’t aware of just how important she is, I wrote them a note to be read pre-surgery.  Maybe that makes me bossy, telling the surgeons to read a note before they perform surgery, but my mom’s life is in their hands.  I told them that I know they are great doctors and surgeons – we did a lot of research – but I wanted them to realize how much my family needs my mom.  I didn’t want them to just treat the surgery as just another day at work, as if they were playing the game Operation that I played a million times as a kid where you try to take the pieces out with tweezers and if you hit the sides it buzzes.  This surgery was a big deal.  I told the doctors that I honestly cannot afford to lose my mom.  We lost my brother to cancer and truthfully, I don’t think my dad and I could handle life without both of them.  My dad is phenomenal and I am so lucky to have him, but my mom is our glue.

We’ve said it before – my mom is the rock of our family.  The picture above is one she shared on Facebook of the two of us 20 years later. She is a private person and will be surprised when she reads this, but I want you all to be as in awe of her as I am.  She deserves it.  She’s a quiet person and doesn’t speak nearly as much as my dad 🙂 , but I’ve come to realize it’s because she has so many profound, deep thoughts in her mind that she takes the time (as we all should) to really think before speaking.  She is SO smart.  I know she’s my mom, so of course I’ll think that right? But no, she reallyis.  After graduating from the University of Delaware and Fashion Institute of Technology in a total of 3 ½ years, my mom went to graduate school at Columbia University.  Only a few years after graduation, she was named one of the top marketers in the nation and was featured on Good Morning America and in USA Today.

I’ve never met someone with the inner strength that she has.  That must be where Andrew got it.  She is the glue holding our family together through this new heartbroken life we are pushing through without Andrew.  I can’t tell you how fortunate I am to have my parents still together.  In July, they will be married for 30 years and I know when they were getting married months out of college, at the age of 21, they NEVER imagined the terribly difficult, winding, dark road ahead of them.  But they’ve stuck together and lit the dark, scary path for each other.  I’ve read reports that the death of a child increases a couples’ divorce rate eight times and I’ve seen numbers stating that 70-80% of couples who lose a child get divorced.  Staggering statistics.  For our family, sticking together was the only way we could make it through such an incredibly devastating loss.  I am so grateful to my parents for realizing that they may grieve differently, at different times, and that there isn’t a “right way” to grieve.  I am so grateful they realized that and continue to respect each other’s forms of grief.  It is NOT easy.  Daily, we struggle.  But we’re getting through it together.

With this most recent news of cancer coming back into our lives and trying to take another person I love, my parents and I are sticking together more than ever.

After waiting and waiting, the hours passed and the surgeon finally came into the waiting room to update my dad and me.  The surgery went as well as it could, but my mom was in a lot of pain.  She stayed in the hospital that night and we brought her home the next morning.  Surgery was Thursday (3/14), she came home Friday and Saturday (3/16) she spent several hours at St. George’s Technical High School’s HAWK FEST and Salesianum School’s SALSthon –both dance marathon fundraisers benefitting B+.  So for those of you at the events, remember seeing her arm in a sling? Yeah, that’s because she had surgery 48 hours earlier, had malignant tumors and lymph nodes removed (one being under her arm) BUT there was NO WAY she was going to miss the events.  And for those of you at UDance (3/10) – remember the smiling face behind the B+ table, who stood for all 12 hours for the kids who can’t stand for themselves? Yup – that was my mom, just days after finding out she herself has been thrown into battle with cancer.

I’m telling you, she’s a STRONG woman.  But I can’t imagine her fear.  She’s quiet, so she won’t tell us – she doesn’t want to worry us.  But think about this… She is now fighting cancer.  Cancer stole her son from us.  She has a different form of cancer, sure, but she’s now going to undergo brutal treatments, like her son.   And you know that chemotherapy you need to save your life from the cancer you’re currently facing?  Yeah, about how that can give you secondary cancers, most specifically Leukemia. Even more specifically, AML. Remember, Andrew had AML Leukemia…  Can you imagine the fear that must be in her mind?  I know my mind has gone to worst-case scenarios a lot since finding out about this diagnosis.  How could it not?  I held my little brother, my best friend as he passed away in my arms after fighting CANCER.  A year later, my uncle passed away in eerily similar circumstances to Andrew.  In 2011, my MomMom passed away.

So here we are, a few weeks post-surgery.  She’s had several appointments with oncologists, radiologists and surgeons.  She will have a port placed on Thursday and will begin chemotherapy soon after.  She will have many, many weeks of chemotherapy AND radiation and we will continue to fight on…

My extended family and my mom’s friends now and from when she was my age and younger (I’m looking at you Cathy and Terri) are the best and we can’t thank you enough for the delicious meals, beautiful flowers, touching notes and support you’ve given us.  Cancer’s scary – we all know that.  But please stick with us and most importantly, stick with my mom.

This is absolutely a twist we didn’t expect to encounter on this weird “new normal” path life has thrown us on since Andrew passed away.   Selfishly, haven’t we been through enough?  But we won’t give in that easily.  We’ll fight.  While my mom will be the one undergoing the chemo and radiation, we will be there too.  She will never be alone in this.  Heck, she has an incredible Angel on her side to carry her through. (As comforting as it is that Andrew can help her from Heaven, it absolutely SUCKS when you think about what I just said…. Her SON, a child, is in Heaven and she’s now fighting cancer.  …..REALLLY?!)

We will try to B+, but realistically we won’t always be.  We may lose followers because who really wants to read updates from a family who lost their son to cancer, fights childhood cancer daily and is now fighting cancer again? HELLO – I don’t want to live that either.  But we can’t control that.

If you stick with us through this next battle, thank you.  If you’ve stuck with us until now, thank you.  I’m not sure how many of you are out there in CaringBridge land reading our updates as it seems to be increasingly quiet, but if you’re there – please say a prayer or send good vibes our way.

Please check in occasionally.  One of the saddest things I’ve seen is when someone has to fight cancer alone.  There are no words to explain how much the support of the CaringBridge world meant to my family and helped us through Andrew’s battle and beyond.  We have literally read every single Guestbook entry multiple times.  I hope my mom will receive support too.

Now, we fight again…