Author: Erin Hutchins
“You two may have noticed that we have been going to the doctor’s office a lot lately.” My father looks at my sister and me. No I haven’t noticed, I think to myself. I am only six years old and Erica is eight. We’re too young to connect the reason why mom had been sleeping so much lately with all the doctor visits. I look at my parents sitting on our brown sofa holding each other’s hand. “Your mother has cancer” he states solemnly. Because we are so young, we just assume that cancer is like having a cold, not life-threatening in the least. Death seems like an abstract idea at this point in my life, not a real figure that can snatch my mother out of our arms. We’re kids, our main concern is how fast we get through schoolwork so we can start having fun. I don’t comprehend the significance of this announcement or how this will change our lives and teach us to rely on God for help.
Every day after we do our schoolwork, Mom takes a nap. But the sleeping becomes more frequent and for longer amounts of time. This exhaustion leads her to the realization that something is wrong with her health. Mom visits several doctors to find a cure for her aching back, lack of energy, and the bump in her hairline. A young physician agrees to remove the seemingly benign swelling, but the lab results come back positive for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Neither one of them could know that this minor procedure would serve as a warning that her life is in danger. After absorbing the shock that her lymphatic system is betraying her by producing mutant cells, Mom and Dad meet with an oncologist to come up with a game plan: chemotherapy, a toxic blend of chemicals designed to kill any cell it comes across, whether it is malignant or not. She has a port surgically implanted to make it possible to pump the poison directly into her veins. Ironically, this life-sustaining equipment is designed so that the chemo drugs can virtually destroy her body in order to save it. She never shows me the medical device marring her shoulder in an attempt to shield me from the full seriousness of this disease.
Mom and Dad homeschool us because they think that it is the best option for our family. They view the individualized attention that homeschooling provides as a valuable resource for our education. Our parents also want to foster friendship between us and believe that having Erica and I learn together will accomplish this goal. Mom enjoys teaching us and is concerned about the effect her disease would have on our emotional development and education. If she died, not only would we lose our mother but we would also lose our schoolteacher. She says that watching a child learn is a miracle and wants to see to our education firsthand. Because I am only in first grade, the time that was supposed to be devoted to teaching me to read will instead be spent at oncologist appointments and chemotherapy sessions. The most important time in my education would be sacrificed in the name of survival.
Mom receives her chemotherapy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Kirklin Clinic. We pass the large fountain spraying water high in the air and walk into the sliding glass doors. My young eyes take in the well-lit foyer and look at the escalators that I love to ride up and down. We go up the escalator and to the left, towards the oncology department. I don’t understand the pitiful appearance our family presents with a clearly sick mother, a father trying to be strong for everyone, and two scared little girls. I just know that the reality of cancer is starting to sink in and I’m afraid that Mom might die. Almost every night, I cry myself to sleep while begging God to save Mom’s life. We sit in a large hallway with high ceilings and a wall made of glass. In the center of the room, there is tree planted in the floor. I stare at the tree for what seems like hours wondering how someone grew a tree inside a hospital. How is life sustained inside a place that my family dreads so much? Life goes on, even when it seems that it is going to flicker out. Throughout the long hours waiting for my mom to receive the life-saving treatment she needs, I alternate between looking at the tree and playing with Erica.
Despite all this, I watch as Mom and Dad cling to their belief that all things work for the good of those who love God. Because of this faith, she received a promise from the Bible that she would be healed. While searching the book of Isaiah for hope, she stumbles across a verse in the fifty-fifth chapter that compels her to believe that God will cure her. She says to us that “when the leaves clap their hands, I will be well.” I watch her throughout the months of chemo staring out the kitchen window waiting for the wind to blow the leaves in our backyard. She knew that when summer turned to fall, she would be made well by her Creator. This powerful faith sustains her throughout the long hours of having poisonous chemicals injected into her port and the nights lying awake wondering what would become of us should she die. This experience leads my mother to the realization that God is big enough to raise Erica and me and that He can take care of us, even if we did not have a mother. God uses this revelation to give her peace to accept the outcome He has in mind.
And true to His word, in the fall of that year, my mother went into remission. We were all ecstatic knowing that God had heard our prayers and had granted us mercy. In my six-year-old mind, I knew that the disease was gone and would never return. I am fully confident in this opinion because my parents taught me that God could not lie. We celebrate during this time because Mom’s thin hair was starting to grow back, she has become stronger, and most importantly, she will live. Sure, she had to go back several times a year to get a CT scan to monitor her health. We are always positive that nothing will come of these biannual trips to see her oncologist. Our pre-cancer daily routine is restored of going downstairs in the morning to do schoolwork, coming upstairs to eat the lunch Mom prepared, and going outside to play with the neighborhood kids. Mom is grateful that she will be allowed to raise the children that God has given her.
But three years later, the cancer is back. We make our routine pilgrimage to Kirklin Clinic, fully confident that this visit will be the same as any other. After going through the rigors of having a full checkup, Mom’s oncologist tells her that she has a hotspot on a main artery in her abdomen and they needed to do a biopsy. This first time I have ever seen my mom cry was when she told us this news. I am not sure what to say to make her smile again because everything feels like vain platitudes. Words are empty, devoid of meaning in the face of another surgery to discover whether or not the cluster of cells the CT scan revealed are malignant. We still cling to the small bit of hope that the hotspots are not cancerous. After all, God does not lie. During her surgery, we sit in a waiting room that I haven’t seen yet. The walls are a familiar hospital purple. It seems like every part of the hospital is painted the same shades of purple, green, and brown. Maybe the uniformity is meant to sooth the patients and their families by providing consistency throughout the clinic. The hospital designers believe that if the visitors know what to expect behind every door, perhaps they will not be afraid. We settle into the uncomfortable purple chairs and waited for a nurse to come tell us how the surgery went. I alternate between nodding off and entertaining myself with games I brought. I have learned through the years that a hospital visit without a bag full of distractions means for a very long day.
Eventually, a nurse brings us news that she is in a private room and we could see her. After going through a maze of corridors and elevators, we arrived at her tricolored room that matches the rest of the hospital. We watch television on a stiff couch for hours in an attempt to distract ourselves from the reason we are in this building. This goes on for several days before the lab results are back. The oncologist meets with our parents in her hospital room while Erica and I sit in the waiting room. The tense silence between us is maintained as though if one of us speaks, the happiness we’ve had over the past few years will come crashing down. Finally, Dad comes and takes us to the hospital cafeteria. We sit at a bistro table in the large room while waiting on Dad to tell us what the doctor said. He looks at us from across the table and solemnly states “Your mother’s cancer is back.” I can’t believe this. I’m only nine years old, and for the second time in my life I am confronted with the possibility of death. This news means more rounds of chemotherapy, additional doctor’s appointments, and another chance to lose the most important woman in my family’s life. We hold ourselves together and go to sit with her for another day waiting for the hospital staff to allow her to go home.
Mom sinks to her lowest depths at this time. I have never felt such despair in my short life knowing that I can do nothing to help her. Because of the promise God gave her, Mom is plagued with thoughts that He has abandoned and lied to her. She finds herself asking Him “if You can’t save my body, how then can You save my soul?” This is a particularly depressing thought when one is confronted with the imminent threat of death. She never doubts His existence but simply questions if God has lied to her. Maybe this is a part of faith, the ability to have an intimate conversation with the Creator asking if He knows our pain and cares what happens to us. No pretense, just an honest discussion of our emotions. A few days after her surgery, I sit with Mom in the living room with a tense silence separating us. Mom breaks the quiet by asking if I am angry with God. I tell her that I’m not angry, just confused and sad. “Why not?” she says. “I’m angry with Him.” This announcement shocks me because I have never heard her say anything similar to this before. She then tells me that God is big enough to be mad at and can handle our anger. I’m still not angry at Him, but I do go back to my nighttime routine of crying myself to sleep while praying for her life. Lying in the dark with tears on my face, I petition Him to once again intervene in our lives.
During this period, Dad comes home from work and tells Mom that we are not giving into despair. When Mom wakes up in the middle of the night, they are going to pray and read the Bible until she can sleep again. Because of this proclamation, we decide to turn to God instead of the grim picture the world gives that life lasts only for a moment and death is nothing but what happens when a heart stops. In this view, there is no hope of eternity or a God who cares for us. The rejection of despair allows us to feel hope again that God will work all things out. Slowly, the melancholy mood in the house slightly lifts and we are able to see that God can carry us through another round with cancer. We do not have to go through this without hope because God already knows the outcome of our lives, we need only to trust Him.
Later that week, her oncologist calls and asks Mom what she wants to hear. She says that she wants to know when chemo begins again. He emphatically states his question again and she replies that she wants to be cancer-free. The doctor states “you don’t have cancer.” I hear yelling coming from the other side of the house. I run to find out what has happened and Mom is shouting God has healed her. Her physician explains that her healing is a miracle because the cancer that was eating at her abdomen last week is gone now. She was not put on any medicine to cause this healing nor did she have the tumors removed. This dramatic turnabout can only be explained that while I slept one night, God answered our prayers. I feel a profound sense of relief and realize that my mother will live to educate us, watch us walk across the stage at graduation, and send us to college. My family has mixed emotions about this event. Mom is ecstatic that she is healed, Erica feels relief, I’m grateful knowing that God hears me, and Dad is extremely humbled that the God who made the world has touched our family.
My family is far from perfect, but we belong to the Lord who is total perfection. We didn’t have to say elaborate prayers to get God’s attention or do anything to deserve this outcome. I don’t know why my mother was granted more time while others are not. My only answer is that life is terminal and God is eternal. Only He can see the ultimate picture, so we must trust that He will bring blessings out of sickness and hope from darkness.
This experience taught me that life and death are in the Lord’s hands and nothing can change that, not even cancer. I can go through life accepting mortality because I find comfort in the knowledge that God will carry me to the other side. I know that eventually my mother will die just like the rest of us. She has not been exempted from the realities of life. One day she will breathe her last and meet her Savior in person but Hodgkin’s Lymphoma will not be the cause. When Mom talks about this time in our lives, she often says that “cancer sucks, but walking with Jesus is sweet.” I find that this is an accurate description for life. Sometimes it’s really hard and filled with pain, but I know that only He can create beauty in the midst of life’s troubles.