Wishing I Could Wipe Away the Words, and the Disease

This post was going to be about fun and exciting words. Words like Roma, and Renaissance, and Michelangelo, and Italia. I just got back from a wonderful week in Rome, where my daughter is finishing her art history degree with a quarter abroad.

But instead this post is about words no mother wants to say, especially in relation to her child. Words like "chemotherapy" and "survival rate" and "probably not metastasized."

While I was gone, my twenty-year-old son went to the health center at the university with a question about a lump. He probably hoped he'd be told it was nothing. Instead he discovered that he has testicular cancer. In two days he went from healthy, athletic kid to cancer patient.

I want to be strong, for him, and for the rest of my family, but all I've been able to do is cry. I hope that strength can come with practice.

The good news is that if all of the doctor's optimistic assumptions are true, the prognosis is good. A 95% survival rate, and the possibility that he won't even need chemo or radiation therapy.

The bad news is that my son -- my smart, funny, good-looking 20-year-old, 3.9 gpa former class president son -- has cancer. This shouldn't happen to your kids. It just shouldn't @#$%ing happen to your kids!!!!!!

I didn't find out till I got off the plane. My husband has apologized for not telling me right away, but he and my son didn't find out till Thursday, and they didn't know the details till yesterday, just a few hours before my flight. So they decided it was best to wait, and told me only after we were done with greetings and baggage pickup and all the little things that go with the end of a trip.

We were loading the bags in the car. I ran over to the garbage can to spit out my stale gum, and when I came back all three of them -- my husband and both sons -- were sitting on the back bumper. My husband said that there had been some disturbing news, and I thought he was joking -- that maybe he'd locked his keys in the car.

Then he said that testicular cancer has a very high survival rate, and I was clueless. And I thought that he must be talking about my dad, who's seventy-five, and I wondered if he meant prostate cancer. And part of me wondered if he was talking about himself, except he's not much into doctors. And then he said it was Michael, my son, and everything imploded.

I cried the whole way home, and kept apologizing for crying when it's my son who needs the attention. And he kept saying it was okay, comforting me, even though he has to be terrified. My jetlagged self was pretty worthless as a mom, basically. I hope/plan to make it up to him.

So we came home and watched the Sounders on TV, and ate Chinese food together, and . Then, as planned, he drove back to his fraternity to spend time with his girlfriend, who's been wonderful.

His surgery is Wednesday. After that they perform the biopsy. And after that we know which direction his life, and our lives will go.

He's planning on this being a minor blip, one that won't affect his life much, or even his school quarter. He's planning on being back in class by next week at the latest. I would love for that to be the case.

If you're praying people, please pray for my son, and my family.