To be dogged or not? To what end is the question. <\/p>\n
On Labor Day 2011, my mother died from the doggedness of ovarian cancer. <\/p>\n
All her life, my mother was dogged about maintaining her good health, so the news of her Stage IIIC ovarian cancer diagnosis at the age of 65 was a shock\u2014but not really. My mother\u2019s older sister had died of ovarian cancer, which prompted my mother to go for additional yearly screenings for the disease known as \u201cthe silent killer.\u201d <\/p>\n
Six months before her cancer diagnosis, a routine pelvic exam and ultrasound showed a \u201cwhite spot\u201d in my mother\u2019s uterus. My mother\u2019s doctor promptly recommended an MRI. But my mother refused, explaining she wouldn\u2019t be able to go through with the procedure, because the tube she’d have to lie in would make her feel as if she were \u201cin a coffin.\u201d <\/p>\n
Denial As a Defense<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s fear<\/a> was dogged. So was her denial<\/a>. According to The National Library of Medicine, denial can be a helpful defense for cancer patients<\/a>, but it can also be dysfunctional, and life-threatening. <\/p>\n Many months after the ultrasound, my mother began to experience ovarian cancer symptoms. Soon, she would find out that the \u201cwhite spot\u201d was a malignancy, which spread into her lymph nodes and abdomen.<\/p>\n In the hospital post-surgery, my mother asked me to log in to her work email account so that I could respond to any pressing emails for her without anyone finding out she was sick. <\/p>\n For the next year, my mother passed off her work absences as \u201ca stomach issue.\u201d To her co-workers, she introduced her cancer wig as \u201ca new hairstyle,\u201d for which she received many compliments. Even after the chemo treatments ended and my mother\u2019s thick curly hair regrew, she continued wearing the wig to work. When she died and I informed her boss and colleagues that my mother would not be coming back to the office, they were in disbelief.<\/p>\n My mother doggedly kept up appearances. Her worst fear was the truth. Her dogged denial had great consequences. <\/p>\n The Cost of Denial<\/p>\n When I was diagnosed with complex PTSD<\/a> in 2003 and disclosed to my mother that my father had sexually abused me when I was growing up, my mother said, \u201cI know it happened, there were signs.\u201d And yet at the same time, during all those years of my childhood<\/a>, she’d turned her back on what was happening in our house, including the spousal abuse<\/a> she was suffering. In 2003, she explained that if she\u2019d faced what was happening to me then she \u201cwouldn\u2019t be able to function.\u201d <\/p>\n According to renowned trauma<\/a> expert and psychiatrist Dr. Judith Herman, in her book Trauma and Recovery<\/a>, \u201cthe ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.\u201d<\/p>\n A week before my mother\u2019s death, I asked her if I could visit. She doggedly declined. \u201cThere\u2019s no urgency,\u201d she said over the phone. \u201cI have a lot to do: shopping, cleaning, laundry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can help you with that,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n My mother doggedly refused my help. \u201cI can do it myself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThen I\u2019ll just keep you company,\u201d I said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re having a hurricane this weekend,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n My mother and I had a complicated relationship, but my love for her was dogged, and I wasn\u2019t going to let anything stop me from seeing her, especially as something deep within me was telling me there wasn\u2019t much time left. \u201cThe storm isn\u2019t until Sunday,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll come on Friday.\u201d <\/p>\n I spent the weekend with my mother, noticing her difficulty breathing in the morning and the way she waved me off when I asked if she was OK, her dogged insistence that she was fine and that I needed to go home before the hurricane hit. I told my mother I loved her. I told her I forgave her for not protecting me as a child. I hugged her goodbye. She told me she loved me, too. <\/p>\n I drove home in the middle of the hurricane, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm, my car hydroplaning on the highway. The rain came down in torrents and, as with intense grief<\/a>, for a while I couldn\u2019t see where I was going. The road appeared before me as a fuzzy wall of gray-white. Increasingly disoriented, I thought about pulling over but I was afraid that might be more of a hazard. I was determined to make it home safely, and somehow, four hours later, I did. <\/p>\n The Aftermath of Denial<\/p>\n Labor Day weekend, my mother checked herself into the emergency room, carrying a manila folder with her medical records, the whole truth of her cancer journey, facts she\u2019d doggedly kept to herself. She’d refused to sign the HIPAA form to allow her doctors to speak with me about her condition or her prognosis. On Labor Day, my mother put down the exhaustive work of her denial. She told the nurse she knew it was the end, and then went into respiratory failure. <\/p>\n Throughout her crisis, my mother directed her doggedness toward what she thought was the road to survival, even as she knew\u2014as I\u2019d come to discover when I read the contents of the manila folder after her death\u2014that her cancer was aggressive and terminal. <\/p>\n Anyone\u2014and anything\u2014can be dogged. But the question is, to what end? <\/p>\n Every Labor Day that I can remember, my mother doggedly cleaned out her walk-in closet, which always looked like a jungle. She\u2019d spend hours going through her clothes, determined to accomplish her task, preening what no longer fit, making room for a new life. <\/p>\n