I Relay for my mum, Patty
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
By: Anne Cyr

Story about my mum's fight with breast cancer since being diagnosed in July 2012 and about my fight for hope with a family tree full of cancer -my children's names on that list.

I Relay for my mum, Patty
My life was again shaken to its foundations by cancer with my mother's diagnosis on July 11th, 2012. My mum's fight has been painful, scary and awful, but she is brave and strong! She has fought through a lumpectomy on August 17th, 4 rounds of chemotherapy in the fall and is just now recovering from 6 weeks of radiation. The cancer was in at least one lymph node, but she has put up one hellish fight and we have lots to feel hopeful about.
I am not ready to lose my mum. I have been fighting alongside her from the start and have earned my new name, "Nurse Ratched" (from the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) by making sure she has the proper care, advocating and caring for her. I have attended every medical appointment, and looked after her ravaged body and her spirit. I have done research and challenged her doctors. I have done everything I can. Last summer I cut and donated my hair. This fall, as her hair was falling out, I shaved my mother's head as she cried. I can't describe how difficult this experience has been.
Her hair is growing back. Her burns are healing. She is grasping at life with both hands: starting to exercise and taking better care of her body. My mother looks beautiful in the wig she received from the Canadian Cancer Society.
The word is shaken. I am still shaken that cancer came after my mother as it has my only beloved brother and my mother's only brother, as it did my mother's mother and her grandmother. We have gone for genetic counseling and have been told that although it is clear that there is a predisposition to developing cancer in our family, not enough is understood about cancer yet to explain it. I can't live with that.
This is my 6th year participating in the Relay for Life and I do so with a super-charged desire to raise funds for cancer research. Watching the geneticist print the names of my daughter, my son and my nephew on our family tree full of cancer is something that continues to terrify me so much that I don't allow my mind to drift there.
I Relay for hope.
I Relay for my mum. I Relay for my brother, Ian, who could hardly make it around the track at our first year in 2007 and who has his life back. I Relay for my two uncles, my grandmother, my great-aunt and my father-in-law. I Relay for my friend Caroline and her family, and for much too many friends and their loved ones. I am ready to CELEBRATE, to REMEMBER and to FIGHT BACK against cancer with London's 2012 Relay for Life, with my team, LIVING STRONG.
Please join me in the fight against this devastating disease.