September is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month! I could think of no better day to post this Gravesen Guardians chapter. Some quick stats: 1 in 285 children will be diagnosed with cancer, but childhood cancer research receives only 4% of government funding. For comparison, prostate cancer receives 8%. Finally, 1 in 5 children diagnosed with cancer will not survive more than 5 years after diagnosis. This month is for raising awareness and funding to help change those stats.
I hope this little mini-chapter will tide you over while you wait for the final chapter of After Gravesen and all the exciting announcements that will be in the final author's notes. For reference, this chapter takes place in the middle of After Gravesen, between chapters 27 (Bucky IV) and 39 (Clint I).
Paging Momcology:
When Bucky started soccer, Winnifred started support group. For nine months, her stress levels had been cranked as high as they could go, and she'd been so excited for an end to it all. However, Bucky finishing treatment didn't solve all her problems. In fact, it only brought to light a problem that had been brewing all along. Bucky finished treatment, but Winnifred didn't stop fretting. If anything, it only got worse.
She relived the worst of the last nine months every single night. And every single day, she watched her son with a clinical eye, wary of the slightest change in his gait, posture, or facial expression that might indicate a new pain—pain that might signal relapse or the dawn of long-term side effects. Every time he left for school she started the hours-long quest of resisting the urge to call him just to check that everything was okay. One day she flipped on the TV and some nature documentary was on. Those shows had been all Bucky was willing to watch when he was feeling his worst, and the sound of whichever-British-man's narration immediately sent her spiraling. It took an hour and a half for her to calm herself down, though it felt like much longer.
It was Sarah who told her she might need help. Winnifred already knew this, deep down, but she'd been consciously denying it, pretending all was well for the sake of her husband and son. Still, she didn't expect a PTSD diagnosis. All she knew of PTSD was war veterans and natural disaster survivors. She didn't think she deserved to be among them, having endured only vicarious suffering.
"Trauma comes in many forms," her doctor reminded her. "You're not the first cancer parent I've seen with this disorder, and unfortunately, you won't be the last."
She left that appointment with a new label to identify her experience and the date and time of a "Momcologist" support group. That night, she told George everything. It was strange, to say those four little letters out loud in reference to her own mental health, but she was glad to finally be able to explain her symptoms as more than just a failure to move on.
"Are you going to tell Bucky?" George asked.
That she hadn't thought about. He'd definitely noticed her nervous, overprotective tendencies in the past few months, but would it benefit him to know the truth? The more Winnifred thought about it, the more she thought not. She didn't want him to feel bad for her not bouncing back as he had, or to feel like he needed to do something to help. He'd fought his battle, and now it was her turn to fight hers.
~0~
Walking into support group for the first time terrified her. There weren't very many women present, but they all clearly knew each other already. She was the only newcomer. However, she actually recognized a few familiar faces. They hadn't exchanged more than a passing word in the hallways of Gravesen, but the faces of fellow cancer moms tended to stick in her memory.
The setup reminded her of what she thought AA meetings might look like, but instead of a circle of sleek foldout chairs there was a collection of comfy chairs and sofas similar to the Gravesen common room. It sickened her that that was the first comparison to come to mind. She sat down in one of the chairs and waited for the rest of the group to settle in.
"Welcome everyone," one of the women said. Winnifred noticed a gold ribbon tattoo on her exposed forearm. Gold was the color for all childhood cancers. "Since we have some new faces, why don't we go around and introduce ourselves? I'm Liz, and my son Logan died of Ewing's sarcoma ten years ago."
Winnifred appreciated that Liz didn't single her out as the newcomer, but she couldn't help but be rattled by her description of her son. A thousand questions arose in her head. Did he do the same chemo cycles that Bucky did? Where was his primary tumor? Did he have an amputation? Was it a relapse that killed him or the first fight? Obviously, she couldn't ask these right now without being overtly rude, but she hoped in time she would learn more of her story. God, she hoped that ten years from now she wouldn't be sitting here saying the same thing that Liz did.
One of the familiar faces spoke next. "I'm Jackie, and my son Nick has been in remission from a retinoblastoma relapse for about four months now. It took both his eyes, but he's doing really well."
"I'm Sharon, and my son Charlie had a brain tumor. He and Logan were actually in treatment at the same time; they were good friends. He's been in remission now for ten years, but it left his legs partially paralyzed. He's in graduate school right now. Wants to be a professor of neuroscience."
The next woman to speak had an accent or speech impediment that Winnifred couldn't identify. "I'm Eleanor. My daughter Kate had neuroblastoma. She's nine years old and she's been in remission for about a year and a half. Everything's looking good right now."
Finally, the other familiar face spoke up. "I'm Edith and my son also has neuroblastoma. He's been fighting for almost seven years now." She left it at that, then turned expectantly to Winnifred.
Despite having heard five other people introduce themselves first, she had little idea what to say. "Hi, I'm Winnifred," she began. "My son Bucky just finished treatment for Ewing's sarcoma in July."
Liz smiled and continued, "Welcome, everybody. Unless somebody has something else that they'd really like to discuss today, I thought we could focus on the theme of helplessness. As cancer moms, we carry with us this weight of feeling like we've failed. Society and our own instincts tell us that we should always do whatever we can to help our children, but in our case sometimes that's not possible. And it's really hard to surmount those feelings of failure."
Winnifred marveled at how accurately Liz described her own state of mind right off the bat. She also admired how composed this woman was, helping other moms through what she endured despite the tragic ending to her Momcology story.
"I'd like us to begin by sharing in these moments of helplessness. Carrying this weight close to your heart only makes it heavier, and one thing I've found through the years is that sharing the hard stuff with people like you all makes it just a bit lighter. Would anybody like to start?"
Winnifred knew these other women had participated in this type of conversation many times before, but she'd never shared the more difficult moments of Bucky's cancer journey with anybody but George and Sarah, two people she felt close to. With the exception of brief waves hello in the halls of Gravesen, she'd never met any of these people before, and she didn't know if she'd be able to discuss such topics freely. Luckily, Eleanor spoke up first.
"Kate losing her hair was one of the worst parts. She'd had this beautiful, thick, dark hair since she was born. I think it had only been cut two or three times before she was diagnosed, and never very short. As a little kid if she got sick, the one thing she asked for to make her feel better was for me to play with her hair. When chemo started, I cut it short. She asked me to. We thought it would make it easier, but it didn't. Only a few weeks later it started coming out in clumps, and I couldn't do anything about it. She would feel sick, and the number one thing I could do to comfort her wasn't available to me anymore. I couldn't give her the one thing she wanted. It was awful."
"Thank you for sharing," Liz said.
"A few years after he entered remission, Charlie told me he actually missed being bald," Sharon said with a slight chuckle. "He said he didn't want to pay for shampoo anymore. Now he shaves his head. It makes him look like an old man."
"Kate's just grew long enough for me to properly braid it a few months ago, and she's requested them almost every day," Eleanor said. "Now that is something I can help with."
The conversation swerved so quickly from sorrowful to jovial that it nearly gave her whiplash. Winnifred thought of all the times she harassed Bucky over the length of his hair, before cancer. If she'd known how that shaggy mane would eventually go away, she never would have given him a hard time over it. But she wouldn't hesitate to admit that she was happy to hear he didn't plan on letting it get that long again.
"Nick struggled to learn to cane, at first," Jackie said. "I'm sure that's not at all uncommon, but it was still hard to watch. The responsibility was all on him, and there wasn't much I could do to help him learn beyond letting him go outside to practice and just providing encouragement. There were many times I thought I wasn't doing enough, but I couldn't think of anything else to do."
The entire group nodded their agreement. Liz said, "We are sidelined in so many of the fights our kids face. But of course, being on the sidelines is better than not being there at all. Sometimes being there is all we can be."
The conversation came to a natural pause. Winnifred expected one of the other returners to speak up, but none of them did. She opened her mouth, and immediately closed it again. The prospect of talking about this was terrifying. All the other people here were perfectly composed, but none of them were quite as fresh out of the worst of it as she was. Although she knew logically that they wouldn't judge her because they'd all inevitably been there, she didn't want to cry in front of them.
"Winnifred, did you want to share?" Eleanor asked. She must have noticed Winnifred's almost-speaking.
"I guess I can," she sighed.
"You don't have to if you don't want to. If you just want to listen today, that's always okay," Liz assured.
"No, no. I want to do this. I think it will help," she said. She took a deep breath and continued, "I think the most helpless I ever felt was the days after Bucky's amputation. The tumor was buried deep in his left shoulder and they had to take his entire arm off. Those first few days—weeks, really—his phantom pain was just excruciating, and nothing they gave him helped it. It was so bad that he cracked a tooth from clenching his jaw. He would just lie there and cry, and sometimes with the pain team there I couldn't even get close enough to hold his hand."
How she made it through that admission without crying, Winnifred didn't know. But now that it was over, she was immensely glad she did it. The weight no longer sat crushing her chest with its entire mass; now it was out there too.
"Thank you for sharing," Liz said gently.
"I think we've all had moments like that," Edith said. "I remember hating feeling helpless, but I also remember being just completely awestruck at Clint's strength and resilience. I still am, almost every moment of every day."
"Me too," Winnifred added. She knew phantom pain still bothered Bucky, but he never talked about it. Never complained. She wasn't sure if that was because it used to hurt so much more that this level of pain didn't bother him anymore, or if it was because he was resigned to the fact that nothing would help it and saw no point in bringing it up. Both of those explanations were equally heart-wrenching.
"We'll never be able to go back to those moments, but one of the best ways to combat those lingering feelings of helplessness is to find ways you can help," Liz explained.
"Absolutely," Jackie said. "I couldn't fight cancer for Nick, but there are many more fights that I can get in the ring for, so to speak."
"Definitely. I lobby at CureFest every year in the hopes that fewer kids in the future will suffer as Charlie did," Sharon added. "Ideally, none."
"Advocacy and raising awareness are so important to this community," Liz said.
"This is usually the part when Sharon talks about her harassment of people who park in handicap spots without a tag," Edith said with a smirk.
"They deserve to be harassed," Sharon defended. "It's against the law, not to mention morally despicable."
"Give those ableist assholes what they deserve," Jackie scoffed. Winnifred bristled at the harsh language—she'd clearly been spending too much time with Sarah, who never spoke that way—but the rest of the group laughed. Soon, she joined in. These were her people, and even after just this one meeting she could feel some of the stress melting away.