Hope, Faith, Community And Survival!

The Good that Comes from Cancer – Guest Post by, Heather Von St. James

There's never a good time to learn you have cancer, especially something as unexpected as pleural mesothelioma cancer, but I doubt the timing could have been much worse.

I had been to the doctor a lot in those months. My pregnancy was virtually textbook easy, no complications, no unusual symptoms, just a difficult delivery ending with an emergency caesarian section on August 4, 2005, to bring my lovely Lily safely to us. They say it takes a village to raise a child and my village certainly rallied around us after we came home. Friends and family, mine and my husband's, came to see us and meet her. We had the kind of happy exhaustion that comes with a newborn and our village surrounding us, supporting us.

I went back to work shortly after Lily was born, but within a few weeks I didn't feel quite right. I was tired, breathless, exhausted. It could have just been working and caring for an infant. New mothers get exhausted.

But this was a different form of tired, so I went to see my doctor and began what felt like an endless succession of tests. On November 21, when I should have been preparing for Thanksgiving and Lily's first Christmas, my doctor broke the news. I had pleural mesothelioma, cancer in the lining of my lungs, primarily caused by exposure to asbestos.

Mesothelioma is most common in those who have worked around asbestos; in my case, I was exposed to the carcinogen 30 years earlier in my own childhood. Now, I had this beautiful little girl, who relied on her father and I for everything and I might not get to stick around to help her grow up. When the doctor gave me the prognosis, I looked at my husband, imaging him having to raise Lily by himself.

The word: I had 15 months to live if we did not find a treatment for the mesothelioma. We took the most extreme solution offered to us and embraced it, deciding we would fight so that Lily could keep her mom. We left our home and flew to Boston, leaving Lily with the people I trusted most to raise her in my absence: my parents. They stepped up from being grandparents back into the parenting role without missing a step and their village, in my hometown in South Dakota, stepped in to support them. After all, they were raising an infant while their daughter was fighting for her life.

Girls I used to babysit for were young women now, some with children of their own, and stepped in to babysit Lily so my parents could continue working full time. Our church family surrounded my parents with love and support. In Boston, new friends, many facing the same struggles we were, kept my husband and I positive and fighting.

On February 2, 2006, they removed my left lung via extrapleural pneumenectomy. I spent 18 days in the hospital, then had 2 months to recover before starting chemotherapy and then radiation therapy. I missed the major milestones of Lily's first year, seeing them via grainy photos my parents emailed to me, which my husband printed off via community computer. My nurses came by often looking for new Lily pictures, and often we all chocked back the tears, reminding ourselves that she was the reason we were there, the reason we were fighting so hard.

Cancer is a funny thing. With all the pain and suffering, comes a lot of good. My diagnosis was dire, the timing was awful and the choices we made were difficult, but Lily has a special bond to her grandparents that time and miles cannot take away. As a family, we have learned that " Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.” We embrace our lives, for we know exactly how fragile they can be.

 

Heather Von St James is a mesothelioma survivor and a guest blogger for the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance. Her story is one of hope and inspiration and she hopes to spread her message to anyone who may be going through similar situations to her own. Check out Heather’s story on the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance Blog.

Heather Von St. James