Relay for Life set for Saturday
With a theme of Everyday Heroes, the 2018 Putnam County Relay for Life is set for Saturday, May 5.
Besides being a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society and a salute to cancer survivors and victims, the theme of this year’s event is also a salute to the heroes who serve us every day — police, nurses, firefighters, doctors, emergency medical technicians and those in the military.
The event will take place from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. at Blackstock Stadium on the DePauw University campus. In the event of inclement weather, the event will be moved to the Indoor Tennis and Track Center.
For more information, visit www.relayforlife.org/putnamcountyin or www.facebook.com/PutnamCountyDePauwU
In preparing for the event, one DePauw student took time to share testimony of what it’s like to have a parent face cancer, twice.
There are three words that you never want to hear from a parent, and I have heard them twice now: “I have cancer.” These seemingly simple words change everything.
The first time my mom had cancer, I was 12 years old. I remember going to school on the days she had surgery, my tennis coach taking me out to dinner and eating lunch with me at school to make sure I was OK, my aunt coming to live with me for a week after my mom’s second surgery, and my mom picking me up from school once a week to go to her radiation appointments where I would sit in the waiting room doing puzzles.
But what sticks with me the most is going to hug her and being able to feel the heat from the radiation through her turtlenecks and thick Christmas sweaters.
Last year, I heard those three words again. We were sitting in my mom’s car outside the admissions office and she turned to me. She said those three words in the same way you would tell someone the time, weather or something equally unimportant.
My world broke. Choking back the emotions, I walked back to my work study, but almost the moment I settled back into my seat, I broke down crying to my supervisor.
My mom is still the hero that I used to write about in my elementary school essay assignments, but now, I have even more reasons to think that. In the last year and a half, I have gone to all six surgeries, sat with her during day-long chemotherapy sessions and went to appointments with her oncologist and surgeons.
Taking care of a parent while being a full-time student and continuing to work has been a struggle, but I would not change it for the world. Sure, having a near-perfect GPA is vital for getting into graduate school, but doing everything I could possibly do for my mom is more important to me.
There will always be a few moments from this journey that will stick out to me in my mind. The first, and probably the scariest, was when she had her first round of chemotherapy. The nurse had just started the chemotherapy and began to explain the possible complications and side effects of chemotherapy treatments. Almost as soon as she finished saying that the chemotherapy can cause shortness of breath and in some cases, people stop breathing during treatment, my mom stopped breathing. I had been studying for a chemistry exam so I was not paying close attention, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw her face change colors as she grabbed her chest.
We were immediately surrounded by five or six nurses who quickly stopped the chemotherapy, pumped various medicines into her IV, rattled off her stats and hooked her up to oxygen. All I could do is sit and stare. This was my first glimpse into what the following months would be like.
The next, and possibly the most heartbreaking, was when I walked into my mom’s room late one night to find her crying, holding the hair that she was losing due to chemotherapy. That night, I shaved her head and with her hair went the image of my mom that I had seen all my life. She was no longer an unbreakable force that I had seen her as, she was vulnerable and truly heartbroken.
There have been many ups and downs in the last year and a half, but thankfully, my mom has finished all chemotherapy and surgeries. Being the only child of someone who has had cancer not once, but twice, has been a struggle emotionally. There is always going to be a part of my mind where I am thinking that this could happen again and at any time she could tell me those three words again.
Cancer is terrifying, life changing, and always looming. The fear is always going to be there, but my mom is tough and has fought, and won, twice.