An unbreakable bond

Mother and daughter battle cancer together

Mothers and daughters have a special bond that nothing, not even cancer, can ever break.

The only thing that makes them different from other mothers and daughters is that most of the time that they spend together is in a hospital.

Carrie is a cancer patient in the intensive care area of the University's Hershey Medical Center, and Gail is the mother who stands by her and gives her support and strength.

"We're together 24 hours now," Gail said. "It's like most people think that it's probably boring or something, but people keep stopping in. This kind of gets to be like a family when you live here."

They visit the cafeteria or talk with the nurses, who have become their close friends. Carrie even cleaned the refrigerator at the nurses' station one night, Gail said.

It all began when Carrie, an avid field hockey player, had pain in her back this fall, but dismissed it, thinking it was just the usual muscle pains associated with being a high school athlete.

Several doctors diagnosed her with scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, which would cause pressure to her sciatic nerve, causing the pain. Other doctors suspected she had pulled a hamstring muscle during a game, and sent her home with painkillers, Carrie explained.

After ruining her stomach from all the Advil she had been taking for the pain, Carrie continued, she got an MRI that told the true story: Carrie had a pelvic lymphoma, a rare type of large-celled tumor on her tailbone.

Carrie said her mother didn't tell her exactly what was wrong at first, then told her "maybe" it was a tumor.

Gail said she never expected to get that call from the doctor. "Never even entered my mind -- Carrie having a tumor never even occurred to me."

"I think at first you're just too stunned to think anything," she added.

Although Gail said at first she didn't feel hopeful, she wouldn't let that get to Carrie, so she hid her feelings and tried to protect her daughter.

"A lot of times Carrie never saw me cry," Gail said, explaining that they both tried to hide the tears from each other. "I didn't want Carrie to be around to see me upset," she said.

Their first trip from their home near Allentown to the medical center for Carrie's tests proved to be a never-ending car ride. By this time she was constantly using crutches to walk, and the pain was unbearable, Gail said.

"We had to keep pulling over so she could get out and stand up," Gail said. "That was awful. I'll never forget that."

Carrie, the middle child in the family, remembers when she used to say, "What do I have to do to get attention? Get some weird disease?"

Carrie explained that before she was diagnosed, her outgoing and independent nature, along with a schedule packed with hanging out with her four best friends, kept her from having a really close relationship with her mother.

Now, after all they've been through together, Carrie and her mother have become very close.

The wall of Carrie's hospital room is papered with pictures of her friends from high school, who support her and call when she's in the hospital, including her boyfriend, who shaved his head for her when she lost her hair from the chemotherapy.

But Carrie said she isn't upset about losing her hair at all. "It's actually a nice side effect," she said, because she doesn't have to worry about fixing her hair while she's in the hospital.

"With my hair (Chemotherapy) would be such a pain," she added.

"I used to see other mothers and think, how can I get the strength I need?" Gail remembers.

She attends parent support groups and coffee hours at the medical center, and tries to attend the hospital chapel service every day.

But Gail says sometimes she feels herself slipping and tries to stop the emotions from taking over.

"Have lots of friends. It helps to talk," she says. And stay on top of everything, all the treatments, medications and special programs like support groups. "You'll feel like you're more in control."

Now Carrie sits in a room of the medical center, in a wing designated "Marathon Street," in honor of the Interfraternity/Panhellenic Dance Marathon. She is on her third round of chemotherapy treatment -- three down, one to go.

She meticulously tears pieces off a pita sandwich to eat, pausing every so often to gargle with a special numbing mouthwash, to ease pain in her mouth from mucousitis, another side effect of the chemotherapy, or checking the level of morphine that comes into her body through a tube implanted in her chest.

But even while her mouth hurts, while she's missing her best friends and the social life that comes with being a 16-year-old, and even though she has to walk around the hospital with various tubes coming out of her chest, she stays ever-positive and upbeat.

"I could never say I had a near-death experience because I don't think I did," she said.

When they finally do get to go home for good, Gail says her relationship with her daughter will have grown. "I think we'll appreciate everything more."

She added that people who haven't been through the fight with cancer can sympathize, but will never really understand what it's like.

Daughters sometimes feel more comfortable staying with their mothers than fathers, Gail said, because they have a special bond.

When she spends the night with Carrie during her hospital treatments, sleeping in the special windowside bed for parents that want to stay by their child's side, Gail says she feels strong and keeps a positive frame of mind.

"We're fine when we're in here," she said. "We just look at this as something she has to do to get rid of her tumor."

And it gets easier as the end of Carrie's last round of chemotherapy inches closer and closer.

"It keeps us going," Gail said. "The end of treatment is in sight."