How Having Cancer Is Like Having A Baby

In a bizarre way, having cancer affects your life a lot like having your first child, though in an entirely negative way. Going for a post-CT ultrasound was like the surreal evil twin of the pregnancy ultrasounds. The best we could hope for was neutral news ("not liver metasteses!"), not the dizzying excitement of the new beating heart that we'd seen on other trips. The side effects after this first round of chemo make me think of the bad pregnancies where friends reported constant exhaustion and ate Zofran like Pez. The "dinner train" of meals from friends is so welcome post-chemo, such a lifesaver when we are most overwhelmed, just as it was when we brought our firstborn home. Entire categories in the drugstore are now newly of interest (stool softeners, now, instead of diapers).

But I see the similarities most in the sense that you have entered another country, and the inhabitants are so helpful and kind and willing to help out with the shock obliterating your sanity when you're dumped into this new land. Instead of giving advice about sleeping when the baby sleeps and nursing on demand, strangers and near-strangers are stepping up to tell me about making it through their own regimes of chemo, the times they had strange CT scans and lived to tell the tale, the weeks and months they felt lousy and how those times can actually fade into the past. One friend put it, if I remember right, something like this: "Welcome to Cancerville. It's a hell of a place, but the people are great." I hate to be here, and I hate that my kids have to see me here, but I'm so grateful for the company.