Client Reflection: Sam
All client reflections are written with the intention of sharing experience and are published here with permission from the author.
“Hey were you interested in having a family?” Someone said to me in between conversations about surgery and chemotherapy. Just like that. Being thirty and newly diagnosed with hormone-positive breast cancer was like flying in an airplane and suddenly life kicks you off of it. Not like a fun skydiving experience, like being thrown out of a smooth sailing plane. And after life throws you out of it, someone shouts, “Were you thinking you wanted to have kids?”
For my partner and I, this was a no-brainer. I was sitting in my comfy airplane seat of life next to him talking about how many children we wanted. How we wanted nothing more than to have a house full of kids. Suddenly, I was falling through the sky and that future was sitting up there somewhere. In my experience in cancer support groups around women who have experienced this, it’s not always an easy answer. I had no idea what was going to happen when and if my feet planted firmly on the ground again (spoiler alert, I am standing but I am constantly off balance, like a baby giraffe trying to learn to walk).
Yes, I shouted back to life. Yes, I want to have kids. That’s when the doctors said I needed to do fertility preservation so that I could start treatment. Of course, I will do that, I want a family, and as I had been told a handful of times since my diagnosis “I was still quite young.” That was it. The answer was yes and I didn’t even know I needed to ask follow-up questions. A week later I am getting blood tests every other day, my partner is injecting progesterone into my butt with two carefully drawn circles on it to support his aim, and consuming a number of meds. I felt like I was just being ushered through the process. Go there, do this, 14 days of this and then a week later you can start chemo. Yay? No preparation. No warning. No opportunity to talk to anyone my age who experienced this post-cancer diagnosis. Nothing. Did I mention this was May 2020? Support groups had been dismantled but everyone was trying to deal with the world ending and here I sat in this waiting room grieving my world ending. I ended up freezing eggs, finding out I had a low reserve and tabling my thoughts of a family until after treatment.
I would have given anything for someone to have prepared me for what I was about to face. Honestly, the whole process was so hazy. I needed something, anything to help me manage my mental health while the doctors managed my physical health. I found a community, a community that was so wonderful and so supportive. However, with the restrictions in place that community felt so far away. I tried to reach out to counsellors or therapists but I would get sidetracked by having to explain the process, the jargon, and the next steps. I found so much value in speaking to someone who had been around young adult cancer patients, someone who had been around cancer in a way that was more than just “my _____ had cancer”. I could let go of explaining what happened to me and focus on how I felt about it. It was freeing in a way I couldn’t describe and it was unfortunate that I found it once I had already seemingly finished active treatment.
Fast forward to four years later and I am sitting here writing this while my daughter naps in the other room. Back on the plane, a bit beat up, but sitting there and moving forward anyway. There were days during treatment and after treatment, I didn’t think I would be back here. I really feel the value in my mental health support, in finding someone who knows something about what that experience was or looked like. We need more of it. I say we and mean all of the young adults who get kicked out of that plane and are all of a sudden faced with something that no one expected to face. So here I am shakily and cautiously carrying my daughter through life with me. Learning to walk again and it is going well, slowly but well, and I owe so much to the support available.
Katie Rice, MSW RSW
Katie is a social worker and psychotherapist with 15 years of experience in the hospital, ultimately finding a home in the care of oncology patients.
