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Today’s my daughter Corinne’s birthday. She arrived 10 days late, according to the doctor’s calculations of my due date. Though there are few people around who can attest to it, I’m certain I didn’t hide my impatience with that delay. “My agreement was for 9 months” I would think to myself, but the two babies that followed her years later kept to that same late arrival schedule, proving what my labor and delivery room nurse mother would often say, “Numbers are numbers, but babies come when they’re good and ready.”
Weather wise, the delay meant the temperatures in Detroit Michigan where a bit warmer towards the end of what had been a cold dark winter. By the time the doctors gave the ok to take her for her first outing, bright yellow daffodils were poking through the thawed ground.
Even to this day, daffodils or, as the French call them, “jonquils,” remind me of her.
Corinne would be turning 58 years old on this day if her life had not been ended by breast cancer when she was 42 ½ years old.
At age 35 she noticed changes in one of her breasts that worried her, but having no family history of the disease, and since it didn’t show up on the screenings, the doctors had, what turned out to be a false confidence that she was fine. As she
was preparing to run a marathon to celebrate her 40 h birthday she insisted her medical team do a blind biopsy, and they found it.
Through the next several years, as she courageously underwent many treatments, each that failed to work eventually, we learned that 85 percent of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history – “Every woman is at risk for breast
cancer.”
Things have changed, but not enough since 2004 when Corinne was one of 30,000 or so women who died of breast cancer that year. This year in 2020, 42,170 women in the U.S. are expected to die of breast cancer. Death rates for women under 50 have held steady since 2007 but have dropped for women over 50. As of January 2020, there are 3.5 million women in the U.S with a history of breast cancer.
To honor Corinne and her life I’ve made it a special point to share her
hard-won wisdom with young women I meet. “You know your own body best. If you think something’s wrong, something is. Trust yourself. It may not be cancer but make your health care providers find out what it is.”
As I get ready to remove the spent daffodils plant I bought to remind me of my first born, I say a prayer of thanksgiving for the gift that her life has been to mine and to all those who had the opportunity to know her. I remember what one of her physicians said of her when he attended her memorial service. He pulled me aside and admitted quietly, “I’ve never gone to a service for a patient before, but I felt I had to come. It wasn’t just the way she handled her disease; it was how she handled her life.”
Have you or someone close to you had to deal with breast cancer? How do you remember and celebrate a loved one that has died?
Sheila
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