I hate it. You hate it. We all hate it.

I don’t know of anybody who doesn’t dislike it. And truthfully, there’s not much I hate. That’s just not me. I don’t cultivate non-love. 

In a millisecond, the six-letter word shattered my life into pieces.

Now I’m floating somewhere between survival and disbelief, waiting for my nightmare to end. 

Life is beautiful, but it can also be harsh and difficult.

What I hate is cancer. Cancer crashes our lives and rips our guts out.

I gave birth twenty-two months ago. My world, my heart, my son and my life. My undeniable love.

Waiting for the doctor in the hospital’s emergency room; I remember texting my husband: 

-“Please start supper. We’ve been here all day and we will be leaving soon! I’m starving!”.

My son had been sick for weeks and after three visits to the clinic with no improvement: I finally took him to the children’s hospital with the impression that it was a misdiagnosed virus. 

The doctor walked in soon enough, but she didn’t send us home. She told me that she too was a mother and this made her quite sensitive to the findings. 

My son’s blood presented abnormal white blood cell counts: three times what they should be.

These numbers suggested a cancer diagnosis. We would be transferred to the oncology department to investigate further. 

Clash! And Pow!

Everyone knows someone who lived through the destruction of cancer. Further or closer, friend or family: cancer hits us all. For my baby: it was leukemia. Acute myeloid leukemia to be exact.

Within days, I began to learn about white blood cells, platelets, neutrophils, hemoglobin and red blood cell counts. I vow to become a medical expert and to avoid Google searches. Never had I been in the front row seat of chemotherapy or oncology before. I didn’t know what to expect. 

On day one, the chemotherapy nurse brings colorful bags of liquid. 

Yellow-orange and red fuchsia.

She plugs them to flow through my son’s body and I start to wonder.

My inside chatter is quite overwhelming.

-“These liquids remind me of plain ol’ Kool-Aid! Will this work? Who thought of this?’

I suddenly realized that I didn’t know much about chemotherapy or even the origins of the word. How could I know so little about something so current? For several days, my son was very tired. He spent a portion of his afternoons sleeping and I found time to learn.

Turns out, chemotherapy is a combination of the words: chemical and chemically induced. Chemotherapy is the therapeutic use of chemical agents to treat disease.

I asked a nurse when and where chemotherapy began. She shrugged her shoulders and guessed the 1970s. I asked a resident doctor and he answered indecisively. I decided to investigate myself.

 Turns out, it all started with Paul Ehrlich, a German chemist who desired to develop drugs to treat infectious diseases in the early 1900s.  He coined the term “chemotherapy”. He was also the first person to document the effectiveness of animal models to screen a series of chemicals for their potential action against diseases. This accomplishment caused major advancements in cancer development. 

During World War 2, people exposed to a drug called nitrogen mustard developed significantly reduced white blood cell counts. This fact led researchers to examine whether mustard agents could be used to stop the growth of dividing cells, just like cancer cells.  At the beginning of the 20th century, chemotherapy was thoroughly developed. It now has saved thousands of individuals all over the world. 

I know this is true. But facts aside, this is my baby with cancer. 

During the first weeks: I knew that I was standing, but I couldn’t feel the ground. I could level and I could rationalize, but my whole world was foggy. 

I felt like reality had been suspended. We discovered the cancer during a necessary trip to the US and quickly returned to Montreal. For family, for friends and for public health care. But is Canadian healthcare so much better?

In the Miami hospital, the cancer doctor: also called an oncologist, told me about a study being practiced in most North American and European hospitals. She gave me documents to present and explain its process. I flipped through quickly enough. Two days later in Canada, the head oncologist handed me the same folder. I learned that these hospitals are part of “the Children Oncology group. To gather enough patients to perform an important study, hospitals unite to treat and research.

Undeniably, hospitals partaking in this study treat the participative children with the exact same drugs, procedures and length of proposed treatments. Concerning the deductibles and financials though, numbers change heavily: if you have access to free health care in Canada.

One morning, I drifted out of my foggy mind long enough to notice a cost list stabled on a billboard on the oncology floor. Daily prices were listed for children receiving chemotherapy and hospitalization without access to public healthcare.

Quite similar to the numbers charged in Florida, with considered dollar value.

Hospitals may seldom treat cancers with rare medication or treatments. For my son, his leukemia is addressed the exact same way in Montreal or in Miami. Alright. Ok. 

Money talk though: the final invoice definitely changes. My son was hospitalized for three days without receiving any chemotherapy in Florida and we walked out with a deductible to pay.

We lived six months in a Canadian hospital with no invoice. 

With our worlds still completely far from any sense of normalcy, this speaks volumes. We haven’t been home in weeks but our bills still land in our mailbox.

Trust: they add up quickly. 

My son received excellent care and great treatment with no financial debt here in Canada.

This is a silent reminder: to focus on my blessings. I’m thankful for the great professional care, for the love of friends and family that surround me and for the grace of God. 

What I dislike will hopefully pass, what I love will grow.

Written june 2021