It’s Always My Turn
Tags: Cancer, Resilence, Memoir, Surgery, Reflections Of Life

I’ve never blogged. I was prompted to start writing, to tell parts of my story… so here we go.

I had a conversation with a co-worker and friend years ago, and the topic was, “It feels like it’s always my turn.” We were saying this as it always felt like we were the ones undergoing difficult family situations or illnesses. Many of our colleagues couldn’t relate during our Friday morning coffee chats before school: their biggest problem was a pile of math tests that had accumulated on their desks. Not that we were wishing ill-will on anyone, but we just kept wondering when it wouldn’t be “our turn.”

The first time I felt that it was “my turn” was March 3, 2013. I woke up to my mom telling me, “I think your father is having a stroke.” I was home for the weekend, after running a 5K at the brewery in my hometown, and had planned to wake up like any other morning and head back to my new home 100 miles away. Instead I found myself frantically calling a close friend and co-worker, explaining that I wouldn’t be able to make it in to school and could she let our principal know.

People always tell you to make family a priority, and unfortunately I learned this early in my career. Teachers are ones who continually put themselves last. It’s in our nature to take care of others. Teaching also can be a nice distraction from the rest of the world, because when you’re at school knee-deep in a lesson, you don’t have time to think about anyone or anything else except the little faces right in front of you.

Those couple days in 2013 put reality in check really quickly. I am an only child, and had thought I’d get to have my parents around for much longer. My grandmother had just passed in the fall of 2012, so it wasn’t supposed to be someone like my dad in the front seat. Thankfully, he had brain surgery the following day to relieve pressure and bleeding on his brain from a fall he had taken on a snowy walk with their dog. The three or four hours during surgery I worked on conference notes for school. I had taken a few days off and would return to school for a 13+ hour day on Thursday to do conferences, assuming everything turned out as we had hoped. Many prayers during those three or four hours, and we were off to see my dad in recovery. All went well, and after only 3 days in the hospital, he was able to return home. He made a complete recovery, and boy are we ever thankful for the team of doctors and nurses in central Wisconsin. I went back to teaching having survived my first and what I had hoped would be my last traumatic surgery for my parents.

Until 2016…

I can still remember where I was standing when I called my mom back during my lunch hour at school. Standing there, at the corner of my desk just feet away from my teammates, my mother told me that it was not polyps in her nose, but a tumor — likely cancer. They were going to do a biopsy to check, but there I stood frozen at the c-word.

It “isn’t supposed to” or “not wanting to be my turn” or “it isn’t fair” have been thoughts and phrases that I’ve struggled with since 2013. They are phrases I still struggle to put out of my mind as I continue to work on resilience. I do know there is hope, and so my story continues. I continue to look for ways to cope with these thoughts as cancer continues to be at the forefront of my family’s life.

I just know that when it isn’t “my turn,” I want to be there for others and help them through it too.