I was not worried about myself. I was worried about my four children. do not care; I have a very capable husband, and the kids are either old enough to vote or are close to them. No, I panicked because my COVID-19 diagnosis reminded me of my cancer diagnosis.
I inquired about this over the phone as well. A routine mammogram at age 49 discovered a mass and a needle biopsy. For four days I waited for the results. Finally, just as I was about to leave the house to take my father-in-law to the doctor, I saw the radiologist’s number on my phone. We had a short, effective conversation. He gave me the name and number of a breast surgeon and told me not to wait too long.
“So, if someone asks if I have cancer, the answer is yes,” I said. “Okay,” she replied. I hung up the phone, took my in-laws to an appointment and waited until I returned home before I called my husband to tell me the news. All the while, I had only one thought in my mind: What would happen to my family?
Over the next few weeks, I was worried about my health. After all the initial assurances about catching the mass early and removing it with a successful surgery, clear margins, and nothing in the lymph nodes, I got the results back from my genomic testing. Those results basically told me that my tumor, despite all the promising early signs, had an elevated risk of recurrence. My first doctor put chemotherapy on the table; After several weeks and tests, my other doctor took it off.
At first, I tried to put some Levitt on the hard road ahead. I’ll joke about the swanky, zippered, leather binder that comes with a water bottle, tote, and many other breast center swags. But the six-week daily routine of going to the hospital, getting dressed, sitting at a table, and being exposed to radiation began to take a toll on me. The terrible burn that comes with treatment also smells bad—worse than the sunburns every child suffered in the 1970s. And I’ll forever have dozens of tiny tattoos that told technicians that radiation beams were hitting me in the right place.
Of course, cancer was hard to diagnose and receive treatment. But it was hard for me to imagine what my cancer would mean to my children. They were small then. My two young kids were just starting high school, and the next eldest was a junior. My oldest was weeks away from applying to college. My only meltdown—in public, at least—the big “C” I encountered was when he and I were going to college and had to separate back home because the airline was Chicago’s O’Hare. changed to New York. The K LaGuardia flight was overbooked. , in a vain attempt to persuade the ticket agent to travel with my daughter, I shouted, “I have cancer!” (it did not work.)
I’m not sure what I thought my diagnosis would do to my kids. Distract them with their schoolwork? Leave them motherless at mealtimes? Or maybe leave them motherless forever?
I certainly know what that kind of loss is like. My father died of a heart attack at the age of 47, and I was 12. He was playing his weekly Sunday tennis game with my mother when he collapsed. He tried to do CPR, but he died before the ambulance arrived. One day he was here, the next day he was not. I wrote a note on a piece of yellow legal paper and, lying in the coffin, stuck it in the inside pocket of his suit. He was leaving, and I wanted him to take something from me.
As painful as my heartache was (and is) for my father, I had survived his loss. So, why was I so scared that my kids wouldn’t survive if I wasn’t around?
My kids are strong and self-sufficient – three beautiful, very high standard girls and one sweet, lovable boy. They have been through divorce and remarriage and the blending of the two families into one. And yet I didn’t want to scare them or make them overly concerned about who they have a crush on or what outfit they should choose for the next day.
I wanted to protect them, not hurt them. But life just doesn’t work that way. Try as you might, you can’t protect your kids from everything.
Now, I am three years after my diagnosis and treatment. I go in for all my scans and tests. I take my medicine. So far, so good. But, in 2020, along came COVID-19.
For nearly two years, we’ve all worked to protect our kids and keep them safe from this strange, weird disease. It became a hot spot for the pandemic, right after my family left New York City on March 16, 2020. For a few days, we wore bandanas sourced from the local Five & Dime in our makeshift city, for a few weeks we washed fruit and groceries (I still do). We learned more quickly, we socialized, we wore masks, we lived nine months away and we did online school.
We all huddled together. They were safe. I protected them. We worked on it, eventually seeing some friends go out, go back home and happily support the kids on their way back to school. We got our vaccines and our boosters.
And then I got COVID-19 – exactly what my family feared. My husband and I went to our friends’ apartment for dinner, where everyone was vaccinated three times. It was our first or second dinner at someone else’s house in years, the drinking, the politics, the lethargy. It was great for all of us to be back together.
Five days later, when I left the hospital for a two-year breast exam, I received news that those friends had tested positive. My heart sank. Four days later, I also tested positive.
When I got the call with my COVID-19 results, it felt like I had cancer again. I knew it wasn’t the same, of course. But I was afraid that getting sick would harm my family.
We’re so lucky my COVID-19 symptoms weren’t severe – I felt like I had a mild cold, some sniffles, a cough or two. The worst part was being separated from my family. I was waiting for a long time for my elder two girls to come home on vacation from college. But, instead, we are different. My husband, who somehow survived the dinner party pathogens, took all four kids and left town again. They created a new family group chat, and I wasn’t in it. My “Covid-cation” is the first time I’ve been single in two years. Ever since the pandemic started, there has been a constant unity between us.
When the world is falling apart, you only want to protect your children. Because that’s what parents do. They don’t let danger come through the front door – if they can help.
Now it seems that the worst and the best is upon us. It is likely that my children will contract COVID-19, if not me, then someone else, but it is unlikely that it will be serious. And they see that I am fine. Thanks to science, we can actually cure disease.
So, perhaps, in some complicated, exhausting, depressing, terrifying and terrifying way, the lesson is this: We will survive. We cannot protect our children from everything. This is always true, and we have all taken a master class on that in the last two Covid-filled years. But maybe we – me – need to understand that this is okay.
I’ve escaped the big “C” twice. Cancer and Covid-19. And my kids are fine.