Parental Neurosis
Three months have passed since Jordan was diagnosed with cancer, and most people have no idea there’s anything wrong with her at all. The hair has grown back around the area of her surgery, concealing the crescent scar behind her left ear. The color has returned to her skin and her eyes are full of life. She giggles, jumps, climbs and colors, just like other kids. It is easy for all around her to dismiss reality. She seems so healthy. Even when we administer her chemotherapy before bedtime, we do it with complacency. It’s just a few pills, we think as we spoon her 60mg of temazolamide – a drug so powerful that we are cautioned to wear gloves while handling it, and the pharmacist must special order it days in advance.
An eery normalcy has crept into our lives. It sedates us with false comfort that is occasionally disturbed by bursts of reality. Our little girl is 6 years old and in kindergarten. She cannot read. Words that she once recognized on first sight are now foreign to her. Where once she could write her name plainly, now she struggles to scribble letters barely recognizable. She mistakes ‘n’ for ‘d’ and ‘4′ for ‘u’, a phenomenon so strange no one seems able to explain it. Perhaps if she was not battling a brain tumor we would calm ourselves with the old adage that every child develops on their own timeline. Perhaps if we had not watched her master studies a year ago, we’d rationalize that she was just a slow learner. Instead, we are anxious and apprehensive, afraid to talk about what we observe out of fear that our worries will cement into permanent fate. (more…)
