We've been doing just that. This last trimester of pregnancy has taken the wind out of my sails, and I have been reluctant to write. I don't want to seem ungrateful - because I'm grateful for every healthy day - but I know I am not myself as of late. Being pregnant is hard work and raising a cancer-fighting toddler is not for the feint of heart. But I get up every morning and put my best foot forward. I feed and clothe my daughter and make sure she is happy, same as any other mother. Kris and I are treading the path back to normalcy, step by step, day by day.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday we received some pretty devastating news. We found out that Eleanor's Li Fraumeni syndrome is NOT an anomaly mutation that occurred only in her. We found out that Kris has it. The geneticist was as stunned as we were. Given his family history of no childhood cancer, they all figured that there was no way he could have it. But he does, and by some grace of God he has reached the age of 40 without getting cancer. Apparently men fair better with this condition because the big nasty cancer that falls under this syndrome is breast cancer. So girls get it worse.
Girls like Eleanor.
And the baby girl I've been gestating for the past nine months.
She's got a 50/50 chance of being a Li Fraumeni baby. When she decides to make her appearance (we are in the "any day now" phase), we will extract some cord blood and send it off the geneticist. They are not great odds, but we are hopeful. Just because Eleanor high-fived death at six-months of age doesn't mean this baby will. And because we now KNOW what we are up against, we can screen and test before things get out of control, like they did with Eleanor. And the same goes for Kris. We will be a regular, cancer-fearing/fighting family.
Except me. I'll be the odd man out. I feel like Marge Simpson in the "Who Shot Mr. Burns" episode of The Simpsons where she emphatically declares that "when I took your father's name, I took everything that went with it, INCLUDING DNA!!!" All jokes aside, I'm silently screaming TAKE ME INSTEAD. Everyone I hold so close to my heart is affected by this. It's a lot to take in, especially in my overly hormonal state, but it's much, much worse for Kris. He's putting on a brave face and is diligently doing his daddy duty and his doggy duty and his crazy-pregnant-lady-punching-bag duty, but he's struggling. I can't pretend to know what it would feel like. He will very likely get cancer soon. He now lives with the burden of knowing something inside him was passed on to Eleanor that made her very sick. That is so messed up.
Genetics are freaky.
But had we known, would we have done anything differently?
Not a chance. We'll take it day by day, and keep growing and keep loving each other.
Loving and living.
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