Elizabeth Austin shares her tumultuous journey as a mother navigating her daughter's cancer diagnosis. While other parents seem to embody strength and hope, Austin reveals her struggles with alcohol and despair, a stark contrast to the idealized image of a "cancer mom.”
I stared at the bottle and considered the fortitude of faith required to believe that something like lavender oil could combat the persistent stink of industrial disinfectant and our kids’ vomit. I caught a whiff of something sharp and sour, like old milk and iron, and then realized it was me. I’d been wearing the same stained period underwear for three days and my hair and breath smelled like the wine I’d thrown up earlier that morning.
Each time I arrived at the hospital with suitcases of clean laundry and grocery bags filled with Carolyn’s favorite snacks, I flashed my plastic “parent” wristband at the front desk and caught the security guard’s knowing, sympathetic look, which always filled me with rage. I didn’t want sympathy from people who could, a moment after bearing witness to my family’s pain, turn from it and return to their cancerless lives. I was grateful for the mask hiding the unsmiling bottom half of my face, my gray-purple teeth, and my lips which were cracked and raw from being too drunk to feel myself chewing on them in my sleep.