How I Survived Cancer

In recognition of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we share one mom's story of how she helped herself - and her children - cope with the fear and baldness of breast cancer.

By Carol O'Day

The writer is pictured here two years after her diagnosis with her children John and Emily.

At the age of 36, while doing what was, for me, a rare breast self-examination in the shower, I found a hard lump on the outside edge of my left breast. I had a 5-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son. There was no history of breast cancer in my family. I was not in the over-40 age group of women who should receive annual mammograms. I was, and am, ironically, married to an oncologist.

I kidded myself into believing he would say it was nothing. After my kids went to bed that night, I guided his hand to the spot and said, "Feel this." His eyes flashed up to mine, and a shadow crossed his face for a split second. He collected himself, told me it was probably a benign cyst and immediately picked up the phone and spoke to his surgical colleague who agreed to see me the next morning.

The next day, I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. Previously healthy and active, I underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation in a fervent effort to blast every last cancerous cell from my body. I spent an inordinate amount of time in bed, vomited regularly, wept openly, spoke more frequently on the phone with friends, went bald and suffered mild, intermittent depression. Statistically, there was an 85 percent chance that my cancer would not recur. Yet, I worried that I would be among the 15 percent of women whose breast cancer does return and is more resistant to treatment upon recurrence. I feared I would not survive, and my children would grow up motherless. I couldn't sleep, and I logged my fears in emails to friends near and far at 2, 3 and 4 a.m. for weeks.

But the worst part was that the daily life my children knew was upended. Our phone jangled off the hook. Friends and neighbors delivered dinners and volunteered to shuttle my children to and from preschool. In the early weeks following my diagnosis, my children bounced between friends and grandparents, utterly destroying their daily routine.