A Legacy of Strength: Reflections on Mom's Cancer Battle

I was a sophomore in college when we found out my mom had cancer. I’ve often told people that I reacted like someone that didn’t know anything about anything about cancer, which is to say, I thought you just treated it and got better. I didn’t know anyone who’d had it (amazingly), it was my first experience with a that kind of disease.

My family has had their fair share of medical trials, including drowning, dying and freezing, and coming back to life (my little sister), a major bone tumor and full body cast (my big sister), rebuilt shoulders, a hip replacement, and severe asthma (my dad), and a pulled groin (that was me, and seriously, unless you’ve done it, don’t judge the severity🤣). I was under the impression from day one that Mom was simply going to get better.

Treatment

And so it began. She did chemo and lost her hair. She’d bounce around the house on her good days asking, “Do you like what I’ve done with my hair today?” She got vertigo that lasted weeks. I can’t really recall all the treatments she underwent, but they included chemo, radiation, lung ablations (which resulted in a hole being burned into her back when the gun 'misfired'), internal radiation injections, and many more. She did many of the treatments multiple times.

When she was diagnosed, I was going to college about 45 minutes away from home. Once I understood the depths of the effects of treatment (days when you can’t get out of bed, etc.) I dropped down to part-time as a student (I worked, too) and moved back in with my family to help out. My little sister wasn’t driving yet and danced eight or nine nights a week, so that alone needed handled.

I don’t remember many details from this time. I so deeply wanted to help, I wanted to make things a little better, but illness or not, mom and I butted heads constantly, and there were plenty of times I was convinced all I did was make things worse. So often in those days I cried about my inability to just GET ALONG with my sick mom—what the hell was wrong with me?! 

I like to think we clashed because we were so similar. But probably more importantly, I had pretty much zero life experience under my belt, I was in my early 20’s. I hadn’t been alive long enough to understand what it meant to be a mom, or how she did everything she did because she felt it was in my best interest (right or wrong). So many times I wanted to move out, to have my own space away from the family I was supposed to be becoming independent of, and away from the many-headed monster that was cancer. I stayed because to the depths of my soul I wanted to help, even if I sucked at showing or doing it.

After what felt like several good news updates—shrunken tumors, low tumor markers, and eventually remission—I decided my work was done at home and it was time for all of us to go back to life as usual. (Insert naïve look here.) I moved about five hours south, started school full time again and got a job. I'd only been there for about two months when we found out the cancer was back and had spread. I was excited about my new life in my new city, but I wanted to try again to make myself useful at home. I was starting to understand how the treatment for cancer takes more out of you than cancer itself, and knew that Mom would have more really challenging days ahead.

There were times when she felt so incredibly miserable that I’d find her on the bathroom floor crying, fumbling with the overwhelming array of different pills, drugs, and vitamins that she took. She wanted some relief but knew she couldn’t get any. This is just one example of what it looked like to fight her fight, and I am still in awe of the strength, courage, and grace with which she showed up to her battle. 

Somewhere around three years after being diagnosed, and after I had moved back again, my mom published this on her Facebook page:

Reading this today, I see the underlying tones—she knew that lacking tumors didn’t mean she was “fixed”. I, however, didn’t. 

Cancer calls EVERYONE to step up.

It claims the body of only one, but the hearts and minds of so many, and teaches lessons we don’t want to learn. I'm proud of having had the guts to be there for them (my family) during that time, not because I was so helpful, but precisely because I didn’t know how to help at all. There wasn’t much I could do, and the things I could do didn’t seem enough. The arguing between mom and I subsided only because she didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. I was too young, selfish, and stubborn to give her a pass on the days I thought she 'felt fine' (OMG, Ali🤦🏼), and living there meant I had to face that glaring shortcoming in myself, and try to learn to be a better person. The weight of feeling like you're making your sick mom's life harder is tremendous. Why couldn't I just do better? That was hard for me then, and still is sometimes. 

The depth of my dad’s commitment could never be expressed in words. He is truly a man of integrity, heart, and soul. He, however, was expected to stay. I could have run (got my own place) but I didn’t. I was able to be there when she couldn’t walk anymore, and needed help getting out of bed. I was able to be there when she needed a glass of water and Dad was at work. I was able to be there the morning we decided she simply needed to go back to the hospital to see where we stood, so my dad didn’t have to face that alone. I was able to be there, and I was there. I stayed in that guest bedroom ten feet from her bedroom door and literally listened to the sounds of my mom dying. She was in an incredible amount of pain. I helped out the only ways I knew how, the best I could, and I felt helpless, depressed, and frustrated.

Living at home during this time was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. To be so close to someone you love so much, and watch them come apart at the seams, slowly losing their body power, then their brain power, and everything that made them who you knew them to be…that’s damn hard. Sometime I didn’t know how to even talk to her anymore. She was an entirely different person than she’d been, and we weren’t allowed to discuss the elephant in the room (that she was clearly dying). Try having a conversation with a dying person when you aren’t allowed to discuss life or death, when you're supposed to just talk about the weather and box scores. It’s harder than it sounds, I guess. 

My mom was an active participant in her treatment from day one. She knew something was wrong before she was diagnosed, and fought to find a doctor that would see her immediately (which was far more difficult than it should've been). She researched every diagnosis she got. She researched every drug and treatment plan she was given. She game-planned with doctors. She gave up her successful practice (business) to go to work for the State for far less pay because the insurance was necessary, and she was still going into work until a week before she died. She got an Easter basket out of our closet and put her IV pain pump and pain meds in it so she could get around easier and didn’t have the tote the "unstylish" metal pole that IVs normally hang on.

The end of the fight

She FOUGHT until the day the doctor told her there was nothing she could fight for anymore, and once she couldn’t fight to live anymore, she fought to die. Her fight was over about 24 hours after having been told there was nothing more that could be done, a process that can take far, far longer. To my mind, she simply chose to get it done, just like everything else.

She passed away in her own bed holding my dad’s hand, four years after her fight began. This was her battle, and she fought with everything she had. She was incredibly graceful, amazingly understanding, and so damn strong. Her cancer required me to step up in ways that I wasn’t ready to do, and wasn’t a big enough person to do. Cancer asked and took everything of my mom, and so much of my dad. They were able to give so gracefully what was asked. I fumbled it, and there are so many moments I’m not proud of. But, I was there. I stayed through to the end, and I'm proud of not quitting on her.

She taught me (showed me) how to do hard things, a lesson for which I am eternally grateful. 

Forever missing her, wildly proud of her, and still learning from her: In loving memory of Deb Uhlenkott (Courtemanche) - November 4, 1956-June 25, 2010. 53 years of greatness. 

January 2024 update

SHIT. I’ve had it on my calendar to edit this post, originally written in 2014, for a while now, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard still. But, it’s important to me. Sharing Mom’s story, and my part of her story, is important to me, A.) to honor such a badass woman, and B.) to share the deepest parts within me that have formed parts of the lenses through which I see the world, and how and why my coaching business and brand are so core to who I am.

So this is the part about BIRTH.

In her death, there was something born in me that fuels my passion for serving ambitious women, and my views on why it’s (SO!) important to prioritize taking care of yourself – body, mind, and soul – on your journey to building your big dreams, and rocking your ambitious life.

My mom was an OG ambitious woman, a feminist in the traditional sense, a recipient of one of the first collegiate women’s athletic scholarships, a goer, a doer, an ACHIEVER. I always tell people that when I was growing up I never had any doubts that I could be whatever the hell I wanted to be, because my mom modeled that. She didn’t just run with the guys, she often bested them at their own games. She understood that being a woman was one of her superpowers LONG before #likeagirl and #girlboss were a thing.  

But a life of super-achieving and hard-charging require something of even the most ambitious women: It demands you take care of yourself – body, mind and soul –  lest you become so depleted that your body, mind, or soul breaks down.

How do you do and be both?

How do you be both a wildly ambitious woman and a woman who takes care of herself – body, mind and soul – when the desire to achieve your goals burns white-hot within you, it feels like everyone needs you right now, like you’re always behind, and like there’s never enough time to get it all done?! The answer to that question is a core piece of my coaching practice and work with clients.  

My mom didn’t prioritize herself, or her needs, until her life literally depended on it. To the core of me, I believe that fueled her disease and cost her something immeasurable. She broke every mold, and kicked in every glass ceiling she came across, so she, and the women coming behind her, could BE, DO, and HAVE all they dreamed of. But she didn’t have the benefit of the research and data we have today, nor benefits of the social movements we have today. #selfcare #paternityleave 

She had the courage to blaze a trail, but it cost her something. I’m not wasting the price she paid for progress, for all the women who came behind her, to be able to build their dreams. I will stand on the shoulders of giants like her, and build my dreams, and support other women who are courageous enough to build theirs. I will take the best of what women like her taught and modeled for me, and add in the best of what we’ve learned since then. 

BOTH / AND

We are a new brand of ambitious women. We don’t have to prove we can run with the guys, because the power of doing it our way has already been proven by the badass women that came before us. We get to shape what it means to be BOTH / AND women, to grow families and business, to give and to receive, to achieve and to rest, to DO and to BE. *The future still belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. So LFG, friend.  

*Quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, italics added by me.