Authors: Bernadette Bohan
The Choice (6 page)
But the best part was giving away all the clothes I had worn during that terrible time. I felt like I was throwing the year away. I was better, and nothing would stop me now.
Chapter Nine
Â
New Life
G
radually I tried to put the cancer behind me, to banish it to the dark places of my mind. It was a blip, a freak event, I told myself. The treatment had been shattering, but it had worked. I had come through it, I was cured. Wasn't I here to prove it? I was feeling terrific, going to the gym, eating well (or so I thought), and â most importantly â throwing myself back into the job of being a mother, relishing its humdrum tedium as much as the sudden flashes of pure joy. Sarah was six and Richard was eight, and Ger was working hard. My life settled down and took on a certain familiar routine: housework, preparing meals, walking the children to school and collecting them, tidying up around them, helping them with their work, drying their tears, kissing their bumps and bruises better, sharing their small triumphs and disasters, ferrying them to parties and after-school activities. Richard went to tennis lessons and played football seemingly non-stop; Sarah was passionate about art, drama and tap dancing.
All this and more made up the delightful monotony of domestic life. In any spare moments I'd be at my sewing machine, running up clothes for them and for friends. It was something I enjoyed, and I felt it was so important for me to be in the home, always there for the kids if they needed me. At the weekends we would visit one of my sisters, or my mother, or one of Ger's family. We were a family who talked and laughed all the time, very sociable, very close. With so many of us there was always a reason to celebrate something â a birthday, a driving test passed, an anniversary. These were very special times: I loved every moment, knowing it was all the more precious to me because I had been so close to losing it all. Not a day went by without my sinking to my knees and thanking God for saving me for my children. They were so young, so vulnerable, so innocent in their trust that I would always be there. I used to slip into their bedrooms while they slept and stand for long moments watching over them, marvelling at their smooth unblemished skin and their sweet childish faces.
Don't imagine by this that I became some kind of perfect, selfless paragon of motherhood. No, we had our share of arguments and shouting matches, and they would test my patience to the limits. I would yell at them to brush their teeth, tidy their rooms, get in the car. At times they fought like cat and dog â I always seemed to be splitting up rows, and âStop it, the two o'you!' became a constant refrain. We were a normal family doing normal things. But at the same time I had such a sharp sense of the closeness of loss, the knowledge that we stand on a knife edge between happiness and sorrow. I was determined to surround them with as much love and care as I myself had been surrounded with by my own mother all those years before â a love that had given me such a strong sense of myself and had set such an example of selfless giving.
Meanwhile my oncologist was checking me and checking me. I thought I was cured; he was waiting for the cancer to come back.
What I did not know then was that once you have suffered from cancer you stand a much higher chance of getting it back, no matter how well you have responded to treatment. For the first three years after the lymphoma had disappeared, I checked myself constantly, obsessively, ever-vigilant for a sign that the cancer was returning. My appointments were scheduled for every three months for the first few years, then â the relief â every six months â a clear sign that I was doing well. We couldn't relax completely, of course, for according to him my lymphoma had been very rare and we had no statistics to go by. However, in between the appointments I would throw myself back into the business of living with the sort of determination and vigour I had seen in my mother all those years ago. There was so much going on in my children's lives I hardly had a chance to think about myself â indeed, I was reluctant to dwell on my own problems, knowing that the past has a habit of springing up to grab you when you least expect it. While the knowledge of what I had been through was always there, I was stubbornly keeping it at bay.
But I will never forget those regular hospital appointments. As I entered the hospital and walked down the sterile corridor to the familiar waiting room I felt as if I had never left, and all the old feelings would come flooding back. In this waiting room I might meet a woman wearing a wig, or a man whose stick-thin figure and gaunt cheeks spoke volumes. There but for the grace of God, I would think, feeling so sorry for them, but glad it was not me. âHello there,' I would chirrup to my oncologist, once in the consulting room, my false cheeriness covering my nerves. âHow are things?' We would chit-chat about holidays, the kids, or Ger. Then I would take off my clothes and lie down on the bed while he examined me all over, checking and re-checking my groin, back, breasts and underarms for anything sinister. Sometimes I asked him to check my glands if I thought they were swollen; or another part of me where I might have felt something a few days earlier. I would stare at his face, trying to read his mind, imagining that I could decipher my fate from the twist of his mouth or the slight frown on his forehead. I often found myself holding my breath until he said, âGet dressed again Bernadette, you're fine.'
âAre you sure now, are you quite sure?' Relief, each time, blessed relief, flooded through me as he smiled his confirmation. And it was then that I would ask my question.
âCan I have another baby?'
He fixed me with his gaze â kind but unbending. âNo, Bernadette. No you can't. As you know, I think your lymphoma may have been activated by the pregnancy hormones. There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting this may be the case. We don't know for sure, but you simply cannot risk it. You'd be mad to give up everything you have now, everything you have survived for. Put it out of your mind â you already have two lovely children â a boy and a girl â and that is more than most people have. Go home and live your life.'
This was his standard answer. Pregnancy might kick-start the cancer again. Cancer could kill me. Having another baby could tear my family apart. I knew he would shake his head and intone the same deadpan response each time I saw him, but each time I knew I would have to ask him the same question. I was obeying an inner compulsion sharper than hunger; stronger than desire. My head told me I was foolish to imagine I could have another child, yet my heart longed for a baby.
For seven years I never gave up hoping that one day he'd âgive me permission'. I prayed that there would be some new scientific discovery â some new drug perhaps â that would enable me to carry a child to term without making myself sick or losing the baby. I was desperate for someone with a PhD to claim that pregnancy never triggered the growth of cancer cells. Or I needed a test to prove that my kind of cancer was caused by something entirely different.
I think it is something that anyone who has lost a baby will understand, that yearning to fill the empty place the unknown baby should have filled. How I wondered about that lost child: who it would have looked like, how it would have been with three children running around. I came from a large family â it was a natural thing for me to expect a big family for myself. I liked to think of him or her as my special guardian angel who had been with me for such a short time, giving me hope and comfort in the dark days of fear as I waited for the diagnosis, then quietly taking its leave of me to allow me, eventually, to be healed. Some people believe that children choose their parents â that they are souls that come to us to fulfil a need in us as much as in them. I don't know about this, but I did believe that it was all part of God's purpose, and who was I to question it?
Not that I was obsessed, you understand. I wasn't depressed, I wasn't crazy, I wasn't about to rob another woman of her child if I saw it in a pram in the supermarket. I felt nothing approaching the way friends of mine who have been trying unsuccessfully for a baby for many years feel. In the same way that I had learned to live with cancer, accept it, and take what good I could from the experience, I learned to live with this loss. The void would always be there, and the space I had set aside in my heart for another child was simply a fact of life. I took out all of Sarah's pretty little baby and toddler clothes which I had carefully packed away for a younger sibling. I held them to my cheek and inhaled what was left of her babyhood, mourning my lost third child who would never wear them. Then I washed and ironed them and gave them away. Toys and books that were gathering dust, never to be held by the chubby little fingers of a child of mine again â they all went too. After all, how could I jeopardize the life that I had fought so hard to keep? No, I knew I had to move forward, embrace life with outstretched arms and enjoy what I was so fortunate to have been given. Ger was happy as we were, and was anxious for me not to worry about having another baby. âLook, love, put it out of your mind â it's not going to happen. Don't rock the boat.' I knew this was right, and sometimes I would give myself little pep talks: âCome on Bernie now, get a grip. You're doing fine. Your kids are doing fine. You don't need another child.' I reluctantly accepted that it was not to be. But the want never disappeared.
So I got on with living my life, as women do. With so much going on in the house with my young children I couldn't mope around, and besides I'm a real doer â I hate sitting around doing nothing.
In May 1994 we had four weddings to go to: one was a family wedding and the others were colleagues of Ger's. Each weekend there would be another long drive, another traditional Irish knees-up where we had great craic, as they say. A good laugh, a great time. I always enjoy weddings â they are so full of life â and I suppose I must have been extra-relaxed after one of these occasions. I remember seeing all the small kids running around and I held the baby of a friend while she got up and danced. The little thing looked into my eyes and gave a big toothless grin, and my heart melted. The need for another child wasn't vague and formless any more, it was an ache I couldn't assuage. I had a strong feeling that somewhere out there was a child waiting in the wings for me to be its mother. That night I chose to embrace my destiny.
I wasn't on the Pill as I had had cancer, so we followed what I call the âtemperature' method of natural family planning. This system enables you to become attuned to your own time of ovulation â the few days around which you are most likely to become pregnant and should avoid intercourse. When Ger took me in his arms that night I murmured to him that I hadn't taken my temperature that day, and I knew it was around the middle of the month. âI really want a baby,' I remember saying softly, and he simply replied, âLet's not get into that now, love.'
A few weeks later we were in Cork for a couple of days' holiday with the children. We did a little sightseeing and swimming â it was a lovely break. When the kids were busy one afternoon on the beach I decided it was time to tell Ger my period was late. âYou've been late before, haven't you?' he asked, without missing a beat. That was true; a few days here and there never bothered me. This was different though â this was more than a few days. We sat holding hands looking out at the choppy sea, contemplating the enormity of the prospect. Neither of us really believed it could be happening.
A few days later I sat in the bathroom at home with a pregnancy test. It was one of those Plus and Minus kits, where a plus sign equals baby and a minus sign equals no baby. My heart was in my mouth. I was excited and fearful at the same time. As I stared at it, slowly but surely a small cross appeared. I was pregnant. The little cross seemed like a tiny sign of hope. âWhat God takes away he gives back in His own good time' â my mother's words came back to me. I sat there for a long time.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Part of me was elated â I had done it! We had been given the chance to have another child! But part of me was imploding with dread. The cancer. It might bring the cancer back. My oncologist would be furious. I imagined the progesterone coursing through my body, doing its job of thickening the lining of my womb and providing a nourishing place for my baby to grow, but at the same time being the evil poison that might somehow trigger the unnatural cell division that causes cancerous tumours to grow. This sweet promise of life that simultaneously held the threat of death.
When Ger came home that evening he had hardly put his things down before asking the question: âSo â plus or minus, Bernie? Was it plus or minus?' We were talking in code and the children looked up in surprise. Were we discussing a maths test or something? âPlus!' I grinned, unable to conceal my delight. âIt's a plus!'
âOh my God,' said Ger, wide-eyed and managing a smile, âthis is going to change our lives.' That had to be the understatement of the decade, I thought.
We didn't tell Sarah for a while, but Richard found out by accident a few days later. He was off school the day I went to see the GP in order to have the pregnancy officially confirmed with a urine test, so that was that secret well and truly out in the open. I took him off to a coffee shop for lunch and the little lad could not contain his excitement â he could hardly sit still. Leaping ahead as children do, he kept exclaiming, âA brother! Mum, I'll be able to show him how to play football!' I couldn't dampen his childish enthusiasm, but I did try to explain that because mummy had been sick things might not always go to plan. âSteady, son, I lost a baby once before, you know. Don't get carried away now.'
Â
New Life
Gradually I tried to put the cancer behind me, to banish it to the dark places of my mind. It was a blip, a freak event, I told myself. The treatment had been shattering, but it had worked. I had come through it, I was cured. Wasn't I here to prove it? I was feeling terrific, going to the gym, eating well (or so I thought), and â most importantly â throwing myself back into the job of being a mother, relishing its humdrum tedium as much as the sudden flashes of pure joy. Sarah was six and Richard was eight, and Ger was working hard. My life settled down and took on a certain familiar routine: housework, preparing meals, walking the children to school and collecting them, tidying up around them, helping them with their work, drying their tears, kissing their bumps and bruises better, sharing their small triumphs and disasters, ferrying them to parties and after-school activities. Richard went to tennis lessons and played football seemingly non-stop; Sarah was passionate about art, drama and tap dancing.
All this and more made up the delightful monotony of domestic life. In any spare moments I'd be at my sewing machine, running up clothes for them and for friends. It was something I enjoyed, and I felt it was so important for me to be in the home, always there for the kids if they needed me. At the weekends we would visit one of my sisters, or my mother, or one of Ger's family. We were a family who talked and laughed all the time, very sociable, very close. With so many of us there was always a reason to celebrate something â a birthday, a driving test passed, an anniversary. These were very special times: I loved every moment, knowing it was all the more precious to me because I had been so close to losing it all. Not a day went by without my sinking to my knees and thanking God for saving me for my children. They were so young, so vulnerable, so innocent in their trust that I would always be there. I used to slip into their bedrooms while they slept and stand for long moments watching over them, marvelling at their smooth unblemished skin and their sweet childish faces.
Don't imagine by this that I became some kind of perfect, selfless paragon of motherhood. No, we had our share of arguments and shouting matches, and they would test my patience to the limits. I would yell at them to brush their teeth, tidy their rooms, get in the car. At times they fought like cat and dog â I always seemed to be splitting up rows, and âStop it, the two o'you!' became a constant refrain. We were a normal family doing normal things. But at the same time I had such a sharp sense of the closeness of loss, the knowledge that we stand on a knife edge between happiness and sorrow. I was determined to surround them with as much love and care as I myself had been surrounded with by my own mother all those years before â a love that had given me such a strong sense of myself and had set such an example of selfless giving.
Meanwhile my oncologist was checking me and checking me. I thought I was cured; he was waiting for the cancer to come back.
What I did not know then was that once you have suffered from cancer you stand a much higher chance of getting it back, no matter how well you have responded to treatment. For the first three years after the lymphoma had disappeared, I checked myself constantly, obsessively, ever-vigilant for a sign that the cancer was returning. My appointments were scheduled for every three months for the first few years, then â the relief â every six months â a clear sign that I was doing well. We couldn't relax completely, of course, for according to him my lymphoma had been very rare and we had no statistics to go by. However, in between the appointments I would throw myself back into the business of living with the sort of determination and vigour I had seen in my mother all those years ago. There was so much going on in my children's lives I hardly had a chance to think about myself â indeed, I was reluctant to dwell on my own problems, knowing that the past has a habit of springing up to grab you when you least expect it. While the knowledge of what I had been through was always there, I was stubbornly keeping it at bay.
But I will never forget those regular hospital appointments. As I entered the hospital and walked down the sterile corridor to the familiar waiting room I felt as if I had never left, and all the old feelings would come flooding back. In this waiting room I might meet a woman wearing a wig, or a man whose stick-thin figure and gaunt cheeks spoke volumes. There but for the grace of God, I would think, feeling so sorry for them, but glad it was not me. âHello there,' I would chirrup to my oncologist, once in the consulting room, my false cheeriness covering my nerves. âHow are things?' We would chit-chat about holidays, the kids, or Ger. Then I would take off my clothes and lie down on the bed while he examined me all over, checking and re-checking my groin, back, breasts and underarms for anything sinister. Sometimes I asked him to check my glands if I thought they were swollen; or another part of me where I might have felt something a few days earlier. I would stare at his face, trying to read his mind, imagining that I could decipher my fate from the twist of his mouth or the slight frown on his forehead. I often found myself holding my breath until he said, âGet dressed again Bernadette, you're fine.'
âAre you sure now, are you quite sure?' Relief, each time, blessed relief, flooded through me as he smiled his confirmation. And it was then that I would ask my question.
âCan I have another baby?'
He fixed me with his gaze â kind but unbending. âNo, Bernadette. No you can't. As you know, I think your lymphoma may have been activated by the pregnancy hormones. There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting this may be the case. We don't know for sure, but you simply cannot risk it. You'd be mad to give up everything you have now, everything you have survived for. Put it out of your mind â you already have two lovely children â a boy and a girl â and that is more than most people have. Go home and live your life.'
This was his standard answer. Pregnancy might kick-start the cancer again. Cancer could kill me. Having another baby could tear my family apart. I knew he would shake his head and intone the same deadpan response each time I saw him, but each time I knew I would have to ask him the same question. I was obeying an inner compulsion sharper than hunger; stronger than desire. My head told me I was foolish to imagine I could have another child, yet my heart longed for a baby.
For seven years I never gave up hoping that one day he'd âgive me permission'. I prayed that there would be some new scientific discovery â some new drug perhaps â that would enable me to carry a child to term without making myself sick or losing the baby. I was desperate for someone with a PhD to claim that pregnancy never triggered the growth of cancer cells. Or I needed a test to prove that my kind of cancer was caused by something entirely different.
I think it is something that anyone who has lost a baby will understand, that yearning to fill the empty place the unknown baby should have filled. How I wondered about that lost child: who it would have looked like, how it would have been with three children running around. I came from a large family â it was a natural thing for me to expect a big family for myself. I liked to think of him or her as my special guardian angel who had been with me for such a short time, giving me hope and comfort in the dark days of fear as I waited for the diagnosis, then quietly taking its leave of me to allow me, eventually, to be healed. Some people believe that children choose their parents â that they are souls that come to us to fulfil a need in us as much as in them. I don't know about this, but I did believe that it was all part of God's purpose, and who was I to question it?
Not that I was obsessed, you understand. I wasn't depressed, I wasn't crazy, I wasn't about to rob another woman of her child if I saw it in a pram in the supermarket. I felt nothing approaching the way friends of mine who have been trying unsuccessfully for a baby for many years feel. In the same way that I had learned to live with cancer, accept it, and take what good I could from the experience, I learned to live with this loss. The void would always be there, and the space I had set aside in my heart for another child was simply a fact of life. I took out all of Sarah's pretty little baby and toddler clothes which I had carefully packed away for a younger sibling. I held them to my cheek and inhaled what was left of her babyhood, mourning my lost third child who would never wear them. Then I washed and ironed them and gave them away. Toys and books that were gathering dust, never to be held by the chubby little fingers of a child of mine again â they all went too. After all, how could I jeopardize the life that I had fought so hard to keep? No, I knew I had to move forward, embrace life with outstretched arms and enjoy what I was so fortunate to have been given. Ger was happy as we were, and was anxious for me not to worry about having another baby. âLook, love, put it out of your mind â it's not going to happen. Don't rock the boat.' I knew this was right, and sometimes I would give myself little pep talks: âCome on Bernie now, get a grip. You're doing fine. Your kids are doing fine. You don't need another child.' I reluctantly accepted that it was not to be. But the want never disappeared.
So I got on with living my life, as women do. With so much going on in the house with my young children I couldn't mope around, and besides I'm a real doer â I hate sitting around doing nothing.
In May 1994 we had four weddings to go to: one was a family wedding and the others were colleagues of Ger's. Each weekend there would be another long drive, another traditional Irish knees-up where we had great craic, as they say. A good laugh, a great time. I always enjoy weddings â they are so full of life â and I suppose I must have been extra-relaxed after one of these occasions. I remember seeing all the small kids running around and I held the baby of a friend while she got up and danced. The little thing looked into my eyes and gave a big toothless grin, and my heart melted. The need for another child wasn't vague and formless any more, it was an ache I couldn't assuage. I had a strong feeling that somewhere out there was a child waiting in the wings for me to be its mother. That night I chose to embrace my destiny.
I wasn't on the Pill as I had had cancer, so we followed what I call the âtemperature' method of natural family planning. This system enables you to become attuned to your own time of ovulation â the few days around which you are most likely to become pregnant and should avoid intercourse. When Ger took me in his arms that night I murmured to him that I hadn't taken my temperature that day, and I knew it was around the middle of the month. âI really want a baby,' I remember saying softly, and he simply replied, âLet's not get into that now, love.'
A few weeks later we were in Cork for a couple of days' holiday with the children. We did a little sightseeing and swimming â it was a lovely break. When the kids were busy one afternoon on the beach I decided it was time to tell Ger my period was late. âYou've been late before, haven't you?' he asked, without missing a beat. That was true; a few days here and there never bothered me. This was different though â this was more than a few days. We sat holding hands looking out at the choppy sea, contemplating the enormity of the prospect. Neither of us really believed it could be happening.
A few days later I sat in the bathroom at home with a pregnancy test. It was one of those Plus and Minus kits, where a plus sign equals baby and a minus sign equals no baby. My heart was in my mouth. I was excited and fearful at the same time. As I stared at it, slowly but surely a small cross appeared. I was pregnant. The little cross seemed like a tiny sign of hope. âWhat God takes away he gives back in His own good time' â my mother's words came back to me. I sat there for a long time.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Part of me was elated â I had done it! We had been given the chance to have another child! But part of me was imploding with dread. The cancer. It might bring the cancer back. My oncologist would be furious. I imagined the progesterone coursing through my body, doing its job of thickening the lining of my womb and providing a nourishing place for my baby to grow, but at the same time being the evil poison that might somehow trigger the unnatural cell division that causes cancerous tumours to grow. This sweet promise of life that simultaneously held the threat of death.
When Ger came home that evening he had hardly put his things down before asking the question: âSo â plus or minus, Bernie? Was it plus or minus?' We were talking in code and the children looked up in surprise. Were we discussing a maths test or something? âPlus!' I grinned, unable to conceal my delight. âIt's a plus!'
âOh my God,' said Ger, wide-eyed and managing a smile, âthis is going to change our lives.' That had to be the understatement of the decade, I thought.
We didn't tell Sarah for a while, but Richard found out by accident a few days later. He was off school the day I went to see the GP in order to have the pregnancy officially confirmed with a urine test, so that was that secret well and truly out in the open. I took him off to a coffee shop for lunch and the little lad could not contain his excitement â he could hardly sit still. Leaping ahead as children do, he kept exclaiming, âA brother! Mum, I'll be able to show him how to play football!' I couldn't dampen his childish enthusiasm, but I did try to explain that because mummy had been sick things might not always go to plan. âSteady, son, I lost a baby once before, you know. Don't get carried away now.'
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