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How do you get through a diagnosis of brain cancer, eight months pregnant? It takes laughter, love, and the absurdity of family. The second installment of Alicia Sky Varinaitis' series on her fight with cancer.



(Part 2 of 2. Read Part 1 here.)

Just Because You Talk to Umbrellas Doesn't Make You Mary Poppins

Six weeks is a lifetime. Six weeks passes in the blink of an eye.

Which was it?

I think it was both. Eight months pregnant with a tennis ball-sized tumor setting up camp in my left frontal lobe, the six weeks my husband and I spent in the High Risk ward seemed relentlessly slow and speed-of-light fast all at once. Remembering is tricky. Whole chunks have gone missing. Or perhaps they were removed with the tumor. But then there are the moments that feel like they happened just yesterday.

The morning my former boss visited, a wrapped box under his arm. It was the blanket my beloved late grandmother had knit years earlier for his first child. Its soft stitches still bore the smell of Grandma Pearl – cabbage rolls, unfiltered Camels and See's vanilla buttercreams.

The call I got from my friend, Amit (ex-Israeli Special Forces, very big, very scary), telling me he had prayed for me at the Wailing Wall. Prayers said at one of the most sacred sites in the world by a guy who could pierce my carotid artery with a strand of hair? It doesn't get much cooler than that.

The hours upon hours my husband and I spent trying to plan for a future we didn't want to face. What if I didn't remember my husband after brain surgery? What if I didn't wake up? What if I had a seizure while I was alone with the baby? And since I was going to have to do chemo and radiation, didn't we need to hire someone to help with the baby? And if so, who?

Sometimes life places the answer to a seemingly insolvable problem right in front of you... and sometimes it doesn't.

My mother said she could "just stay put." She had driven in from New Mexico to help with "whatever we needed," and it appeared to her that what we needed was a Mary Poppins.

My mother wanted to be our nanny. At first, I thought she was joking. She and I could barely spend a single day together without wanting to run as far, far away from each other as possible. Everything meant something deeper. Nothing was ever taken at face value.

I'd say something like, "I'm not going to finish this pudding. Do you want it?" And she would snap back, "I don't need your leftovers, Sky." And I would scramble to explain, "I wasn't saying you needed my leftovers, Mom. I just asked if you wanted to finish my pudding. I just don't like to waste things." And she'd start to cry, "Here we go again, your issue with 'wasting things.' I guess that's my fault, too."

"I guess that's my fault, too" was one of my mom's Top-Ten Go-To Phrases during a fight. "Your dad wasn't a saint, you know" and "I can't keep apologizing for things that happened years ago" were also very popular. There was absolutely no way I could sign off on my mom taking care of our baby when I couldn't even have a sane conversation about pudding with her.

You're probably thinking that I was being the very definition of ungrateful. Here was my mother, offering to turn her entire life upside down to care for her terminally ill daughter and her brand-new infant granddaughter, and my knee-jerk reaction was to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of her proposal.

Of course you would think that. You haven't met my mother...

Mine was a childhood of complete chaos. When my parents divorced, they used up all their Solomon-esque wisdom fighting over who got the Porsche. When the issue of custody of my brother and me came up for debate, they found themselves completely spent and shrugged when one of them casually suggested, "Alternating years?" Because when it comes to kids, structure and consistency are so overrated.

When the divorce was final, our parents went their separate ways. My dad moved into a house three streets over that had exactly the same floor plan as our old house. My mom packed her things into a rust-pocked camper van and took to the road to find herself. Kindred spirits they were not.

Our years living with Dad were as close to normal as a divorced man left alone with two young kids can pull off. Which is to say, not very. Thanks to the Dad Years, I make a mean PB&J and can hotwire a cable box to show R-rated movies in under eight seconds.

The years we lived with Mom were more manic, like dancing the cha-cha to a Sex Pistols song. My mother had to be on the go. "Here" wasn't where she wanted to be, but when she got "There," it wasn't right, either. Going to live with Mom meant finding the closest airport to her latest place of residence. Which meant lots of hours spent on the phone with travel agents, asking questions like, "Baltimore or Pittsburgh, which airport is closer to Cumberland?"

I can't remember where I leave my keys half the time, but I'm golden when it comes to U.S. airport codes. Why, yes, "BNA" is the correct code for Nashville International. Have a great flight.

Fast-forward to 2002. I'm 30, lying in bed with a brain tumor, and at that precise moment, my mom suddenly wants to plug in. She wants us to "work on our relationship" and wonders why we're "so disconnected." Lady, where were you when I got my period? Oh, that's right, you were paying a psychic to help you get in touch with your past lives. I forget, was it the Medieval shoemaker or the Mayan princess that made you averse to spicy foods?

But true to my co-dependent form, I went all needy inner-child and started believing that maybe my mom and I could resurrect our relationship. I decided, at the very least, my dilemma warranted a discussion with my husband. He listened intently, and suggested I get another MRI to see if my tumor had taken over the part of my brain that controlled rational thought. Since our doctor wouldn't sign off on another brain scan, my husband settled for reminding me of some of my mom's more recent transgressions:

The time I told her I was converting to Catholicism, and she just couldn't figure out how a daughter she raised could even consider joining such a "misogynistic and tyrannical religion." It took some time, but she eventually gave in and showed up to see me get confirmed. She even brought a gift. A book called "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner."

The time she tried to stop my wedding, as I walked down the aisle, because she felt my tears were a sure sign I wanted her to save me from the monstrous plight of marriage. It was my wedding day. I was happy. Go figure. She then proceeded to get really drunk at the reception. Because that's the best way to apologize to your daughter for almost ruining her special day.

The time she called to invite my husband and me up to Santa Barbara for a day of sailing. "Sounds like fun," I said. Then she added that she and the skipper would most likely be sailing the high seas nude. "That's not going to be a problem, is it?" she asked.

My husband was right. My mother was a lot of things, but our Mary Poppins she most definitely was not. And so for the very first time in my life, I said no to my mother. Her nanny services would not be needed. She accepted my answer graciously and promised it wouldn't change a single thing. She'd be right by my side for however long I needed her to be.

Later that same day, our doctor came by the room to tell us our baby was ready to be delivered and that we were scheduled for a c-section the very next afternoon. And just like that, six weeks of tumultuous anticipation were behind us. Time for our unknown future to take center stage: a new infant, brain surgery in eight days, my husband running between the baby and his sick wife. We were going to need all the support we could get.

I called my mom and told her the news. She was a little out of breath - from packing. She was going back to New Mexico. "I can't just sit around anymore," she said. "And besides, you guys seem to have this handled." I reminded her that the baby -- her first grandchild -- was coming in less than 24 hours. She couldn't be serious about leaving. Could she?

When my husband ran breathlessly into the waiting room to announce that we had delivered a healthy baby girl, my mother was seven hours into her drive back home to New Mexico.

As a kid, I'd conjure up these "perfect storm" scenarios -- the more tragic, the better. I thought if something really bad happened to me, my mom would have to love me. So when something tragic actually did happen -- and what better storm than being eight months pregnant and lying in the hospital with brain cancer -- how was it so easy for her to just drive away?

Turns out, cancer is not a fix-it-all. Just because you get it, no matter how dire your prognosis, people don't have to treat you better. (Although they should be nice to you, even if it's only through your first round of chemo, to avoid the engraved invitation to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks.) What cancer is is an instant wake up call to all the blessings you do have. And I realized I had my husband.

A husband who spent every single night I was in High Risk sleeping at the foot of my bed.

A husband who asked questions of every single doctor, nurse and orderly that came through our door. He knew the "what" and the "when" and the "how much" of every medication I needed. And if it was five minutes past the time I was supposed to get something, then he was out at the nurses' station doing his best impression of Shirley McLaine in "Terms of Endearment."

A husband who convinced an orderly to look the other way and smuggled in my puppy for some much-needed dog breath-laced loving. A husband who sought out one of the premier brain surgeons in the world and convinced him to do my surgery. A husband who gave me my most precious gift... my daughter.

Cancer made me see that I actually had the family I always wanted as a kid.

My mom and I haven't spoken in a long time. There's a lot of anger left over, and we've decided that when words exchanged can wreak so much havoc, silence is best. And yet, I cannot bring myself to close the door on reconciliation.

Anything is possible. Six years "free and clear" after being diagnosed with incurable brain cancer has definitely taught me that. And if reconciliation proves too difficult to achieve during this lifetime, then I hope my mother is right about reincarnation, and we get the chance to do our dance again. I'm keeping fingers crossed that, for our next go around, Life picks a waltz.

**************************

Happy Mammogram!

By Cindy Chupack

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