I never thought I would have to hear or deal with Cancer until I was much older. But in 2012 Cancer hit my family twice. In the Spring, I found out my aunt was fighting breast cancer. This made cancer real. I feel a lot of people don’t feel cancer is real until it touches them on a personal side. If someone from your family or someone you know, then you might understand the effects it has on a family. After I found out my aunt was diagnosed I started to change some of our habits. That summer I joined the Avon Walk for October and started training to run the 39 miles.

I also went to my doctor and asked to get a mammogram. The doctor said I was too young and I was also breastfeeding so the results wouldn’t be accurate. So, instead they did a sonogram of my breast to look for any abnormalities (everything was clear thank God). In November we went away and my little one (at the time he was 10 months) got really sick. When we got back we found out he had neuroblastoma (if you want to know how we found out, you can click here).

It has been a little over 2 yrs since his diagnosis and I will tell you how everything changed. I do not take one moment for granted. I can’t even explain what happens in my brain and my heart when I look at my child. The thought of not having him with us kills me inside each and every day. We were very fortunate to find the cancer on time and able to treat it by having surgery and scheduled-regular MRIs and Oncologists visit.

I’m not going to lie, the fact that he is “healthy” now doesn’t change how I see him. I try not to think about it but I see him as a sick child and this is something I need to work on and change. But, as a mom is harder because he probably won’t remember his surgery, his MRIs, or his tests, but I DO. I remember everything. It’s so vivid in my brain. There is no amount of therapy that can erase those memories.

The most important way it changed me is I respect life. I no longer worry about the things that I cannot change. It’s easy to stress about your job, your lifestyle, money, but we never really stress about health until it is threatened. I reached that point. In a way is very liberating. I understand why as moms we stress about schools and what kids eat, and their social life, but at the end of the day does that stuff really matter? If we are stressing more than living is it worth it?

 I make it a point to see the perfection of every day. We are alive, we are together, we are here. Recently a conversation with a friend turned into a competition of “I do this-you should do that” and honestly I was like “I really don’t care”. We talked about co-sleeping and honestly I can’t imagine NOT co-sleeping with the. The reality is life IS short, and we really don’t know when it will end, SO Yes I want to live in the moment and enjoy these short years I have with my son and my other children.

I think what I’m trying to say is that cancer sucks. And it has changed me forever. And that even though it’s been over 2 yrs since the diagnosis I still suffer every day because I never really know when it’ll come back, or if another cancer will develop in his system. So for now I do the worst thing possible. I spoil him. I spoil him because I feel is the only way I can make up what happened to him. Of course, I need to change this.