Unknown Strength

“You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have” – Cayla Mills

For all of the horror associated with its physical complexities, the emotional aspects of dealing with cancer are possibly the most difficult to bear. Cancer sufferers and their loved ones will tell you that experiencing cancer heightens how you feel and process emotions. Each experience becomes more poignant, more monumental than the one before. Your sorrow turns into a deep, gut-wrenching lament and your happiness is the most boisterous joy of your lifetime. Our lives swing back and forth between these two extremes on a never-ending pendulum of emotion, each swing bringing us increasingly closer to the tipping point that will bring our delicately balanced world crashing down in an unfixable heap.

This rollercoaster of emotion seems to make time speed up, leaving us motionless as the world continues on with a terrible ferocity that ages us by tenfold, minutes turning to days, days to months, and months to years. Other times, it seems that the entire world comes to a complete standstill and we are granted a single lucid, angelic moment of clarity, of peace, amidst the chaos that is everyday life. These moments are God-sent and allow us to put into perspective all that is happening in our lives, often refocusing our energy on things of actual importance, rather than all of the peripheral nonsense in which we can become entangled.

Cancer heightens our emotions because it brings us face to face with true mortality. It makes us realize that for all of our medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and pharmacologic marvels, there is still a foe we cannot master. This insidious enemy uses our most valuable commodity – time – against us, turning our everyday life into a quintessential race that can never be won.

Cancer makes you think about life not as a constant, but instead as a shortening timeline, like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass slowly stealing your memories, your triumphs, your moments of joy. You begin to count your time not in minutes and hours, but instead by the second, because now more than ever, the next tick on your clock is not guaranteed. Cancer steals from you, it confuses you, it mystifies you in ways that are so infuriating that you are left feeling helpless and awash in your own sea of troubles.

And yet, not every day is a disaster, nor every week. Hazel has progressed wonderfully. She has regained so much strength and vitality that it is hard to believe that just over a month ago she was lying in a hospital bed, so weak that she couldn’t even walk around her room. She climbs the stairs to her room multiple times a day to retrieve a baby doll or to see what her sister is doing. She runs, jumps, laughs, giggles, and talks non-stop. Our week was filled with smiles and talk of other things beyond cancer; swimming, short family trips, sunshine, and bike rides. It truly was a glorious week in our cancer journey.

But just as suddenly as our life can improve, so too can we be reminded that Hazel continues to wage a war inside her body. With devastating cruelty our happiness came to an end on Saturday morning as we observed Hazel exhibiting telltale effects of the chemo drugs that pulse through her veins. Her legs are again beginning to weaken as are some of the tiny muscles in her left eye that help her focus and look straight ahead. As she plays throughout the day, her eye will turn in ever so slightly to the right, which affects her depth perception and long distance vision. These effects are likely temporary and given her age, there are lots of ways to correct the sight and musculature issues over time as she grows, but those facts do little to alleviate the pain we feel as she stares up at us with a quizzical grin on her face and we see her eye tracking over to the right.

Beyond her crossed eyes, most people wouldn’t even notice much is wrong with Hazel right now, and maybe we put more emphasis on this new side effect than we really should. For the most part, her eyes remain clear and focused, she still plays happily and her giggles throughout the house continue to bring us joy. But my heart drops when I see her reach for a small toy multiple times and miss because her depth perception has been altered, or when she rubs her eyes over and over again to try to clear her blurred vision.

It has been said that the eyes are windows to the soul, which is perhaps why this bothers me so much. Through our journey so far I have always managed to stay focused on our end goal because no matter how sick Hazel’s body became, I could always see “her” shine through in her personality, her actions, and by staring deep into her beautiful blue eyes. She is my daughter, our souls are connected, and we have always been able to communicate an entire conversation through a single look. In this newest side effect my greatest fear of all surfaces: losing that connection, that last known thread of communication with my tiny daughter. I worry that without that connection she will feel trapped inside of her body, unable to escape the monster that attacks her from the inside out and unable to find solace in me, her father.

Despite these fears, Hazel reassures me every day that our connection remains strong. She shows me that this disease may change her body, but it will not break her spirit. She laughs her deep, belly laugh when her favorite show is on, sings at the top of her lungs to Trolls and Moana songs, and taps her foot with hands on her hips as she impatiently waits for me to finish fixing scrambled eggs. She dances, she jumps, she says “I lub you” constantly. She may have to find ways around her side effects and her illness, but Hazel is still Hazel, and nothing that happens to her tiny body will ever change that.

Cancer comes as a thief in the night, attacking what you hold precious at times when you least expect it. Regardless of the level of fortification and vigilance in your life, cancer will find the chink in your armor. Our emotions remain heightened as we pour more and more layers of love, care, and attention on Hazel, building up as much protection as we can against the next attack, whenever it may come. This heightened awareness takes a heavy toll on our sanity and our energy, but it does have a positive effect as well. It makes us intentional. Intentional with our time, intentional with our actions, and intentional with our love. Our household does not just “go through the motions” anymore. Everything we do has a purpose, and that purpose is to remain strong.

My family of six is the strongest team I am ever to witness in my lifetime. Cancer is a disease that threatens to tear apart families, stripping away layers of comfort and happiness bit by bit until nothing is left. But not ours. Not now, not ever. Like a battle unit, we stand strong for Hazel, and as the lead warrior tires or is wounded, the next in line takes his place to weather the cavalcade of attacks. We each dutifully take our place at the front at different times, but can always return to the back for a period of respite when needed. We will not be beaten, we will not fall. For as my eldest son Paul – wise beyond his years and far too experienced for the age of 9 – said the day he learned of Hazel’s diagnosis, “We are in this together, as a family, as one.”

“Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” - Deuteronomy 31:6-8