I CALLED MY MUM WITH MY CANCER DIAGNOSIS SHE SAID SHE WAS BUSY WITH MY SISTER’S WEDDING FITTINGS

    Episode 1✅

When I told my parents I had cancer, they told me they were busy. We're at your sister's wedding consultation. Can we talk later? That was it. No pause, no concern, just a brush off while I stood outside the oncology center, gripping a folder of test results that had just flipped my entire life upside down.

Stage 2 Hodkins lymphoma. I didn't cry. Not right away. I went numb. And just like that, I knew I'd be walking through this alone. Except I wasn't completely alone. My 10-year-old daughter, Eliia, held my hand through everything. Every appointment, every silent drive home, every sleepless night. Months passed.

I lost weight, lost hair, lost energy, but I never lost her. Then one afternoon, my parents sent a message, not to check on me, not to ask about my health. They wanted to know if I could help pay for my younger sister Madison's wedding. The same sister whose planning sessions and bridal fittings they prioritized over my diagnosis. I didn't answer.

But Eliia did something I hadn't expected. She took one of my hospital letters and wrote a note. Then she mailed them both. When my parents opened the envelope, my mom sat down without a word and my father turned pale. That was the first time they really saw me. But let me go back. Before everything fell apart, life was quiet, predictable.

I worked as a nurse at a small health clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina. Most days I woke up at 6:00, made breakfast for Eliia, and biked to work. My shift was from 8:00 to 4:00. Checkups, calming nervous patients, holding hands when bad news came. I liked my job. I liked feeling useful. Eli is 10, sharp, observant, and more emotionally aware than most adults I know.

She loves frogs, hates socks, and once told me she wanted to become a scientist who creates colors no one's ever seen before. She also has this uncanny ability to know when I'm lying just by looking at my eyes. Besides her, I didn't have much of a support system. My parents, Reuben and Darlene, lived about 3 hours away in Raleigh.

We talked occasionally, birthday calls, a few holiday check-ins. Our relationship was cordial but shallow. My mom always seemed more interested in Madison's life. her college applications, her relationships, her Pinterest boards filled with wedding ideas. Madison was their pride. I was their quiet daughter, the one who always made life harder than it needed to be.

As my dad once said, a week before the diagnosis, I felt something off. It wasn't just tiredness. It was a deep, dragging fatigue that sat in my bones. I had random bruises. My hands achd. I told myself it was stress or burnout. Nurses are always tired, right? But Alia noticed. One evening, while I was folding towels, she stood beside me and whispered, "You feel slow, mama.

Like something in you is going away." That hit me harder than any symptom. She could see it. The next morning, I scheduled blood work. I didn't tell anyone, not my parents, not even my best friend, Lorna, who had just moved to Florida. I figured it was nothing. Maybe iron deficiency, maybe stress. But when my doctor called me in and asked me to sit down, I knew it wasn't nothing.

biopsy, imaging, diagnosis, cancer. I was alone in a cold exam room, staring at a wall chart while a nurse gently asked if there was someone I could call. I called my mom. She answered immediately. Lymphoma stage two. I'm starting treatment soon, I said. Her voice didn't change. In the background, I could hear Madison laughing and some woman talking about floral  arrangements 

 TBC..

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