Balancing Act

Cancer, Children, and Career

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By Heike Henderson

Everything seemed to be going according to plan. I had completed my dissertation, received my Ph.D., and found a job as an assistant professor of German at a metropolitan state university in the West. I had a supportive husband, I liked my job, and finally, after nine months of trying, I was pregnant. I could not have been happier.

Looking back, I think of that period as my former life. My new life began in the fall of 1999 when, while pregnant with my first child, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. According to the statistics, I should never have gotten it in the first place. Or at least not at such an early age.

Now, five years later, tenured, healthy, and with two children, my life seems to be on track again. The statistics tell me that I have a good chance of having beaten the cancer. But unfortunately, I don't trust my body anymore. And bliss and happiness make me nervous. They feel too much like the calm before the storm, like that fateful year when utter joy turned to utter sorrow.

Up to that point, my biggest concern had been getting tenure. Suddenly that paled in comparison to fighting cancer and raising a child.

And yet getting tenure was important to me. I loved my job, at least most of the time, and I wanted to keep it. Hence the beginning of a lot of juggling acts, which sometimes still amaze me in their complexity, and in the unexpected pleasures and delights they bring.

Doing chemotherapy while dealing with a newborn (and seeing German enrollments, which I had worked so hard to build, start to dwindle) was hell. It also caused a lot of contradictory emotions, which I was not sure whether to attribute to cancer or to new motherhood. I had never before experienced the complete and utter love that I was feeling for my newborn son. At the same time, I had never before been so afraid. And so exhausted. How much of that was chemically induced fatigue and how much just the normal sleep deprivation of a new parent?

I am only now starting to work through some of the more complicated issues of fear and resentment, anxiety and anger. At first, I was simply too busy surviving. Making it through each day. I had a lot of mixed feelings about not being able to do many of the things that a mother is "supposed" to do, like breastfeeding. Or bonding with her child immediately after birth.

Listening to women brag about their wonderful experience of a so-called natural childbirth just made me angry. My son was born one month early during a three-and-a-half-hour cancer surgery, after I had gone through another surgery when I was six months pregnant. Intellectually, I knew that that did not make me a bad mother. And yet, on a very deep emotional level, I felt insufficient. I felt like I was shortchanging my son, and I felt like my body had let me down.

More than anything else, I wanted to spend time with Christopher. But at the same time I wanted to keep the department going. I was the only tenure-track professor of German, and I knew that my students and colleagues were relying on me. So I returned to work before I had even finished my last course of chemotherapy.

Looking back, I should have taken more time off. But I have also come to realize that I had reasons that went beyond my feelings of responsibility for the department. I think I was trying to salvage a piece of my old self -- precancer and premotherhood -- that at the time seemed so completely lost.

Going back to work reminded me that I was more than my body. Work was a connection to my self as it was before, to a self that included my intellect, to a self where I felt in control.

Five years after my initial diagnosis, I am still trying to use my academic training to regain a sense of control over my life.

There has not been a single day since my diagnosis that I have not thought about cancer. It still upsets me when friends and family tell me how happy they are that I have "beaten this thing." Unfortunately, we cannot yet be sure about that, and it is too early to relax. Yes, I know they mean well, but at the same time they minimize my justifiable fears.

Fears and scars are not the only results of cancer and motherhood, however. I have changed in many ways, some of them subtle, some of them profound. I have stopped worrying about little practical problems -- like having to travel to China in the middle of the semester to adopt our second child, our daughter, Maya. After all, the German enrollments I was so concerned about during chemotherapy did come back up, and although some students were inconvenienced by my absence, I have encountered an amazing amount of support.

If I have learned anything from having had cancer, it is to focus on the process rather than the outcome. That simple lesson has been especially difficult for me to learn, which is not too surprising considering that I am a type-A personality who likes to plan. (In hindsight, it makes me laugh that back in 1999 I tried to plan my pregnancy, to time it just right for a delivery between semesters.)

Early on in the cancer, I wanted to fast forward through the next 10 years -- which I knew would be filled with insecurity and fears of a recurrence -- and start again when I would be reasonably sure to have survived. And then I realized that that would mean willing away 10 years of my life. I was focused on being "successful" in surviving those years, instead of actually looking forward to living them.

I do believe that there is a parallel to the tenure process as well as to child rearing in all this. At times, I had been so focused on getting tenure that I forgot why I entered the profession in the first place. There were moments when I could not enjoy my work, because the anxiety about the outcome seemed to be stronger than the pleasure I derived from doing the work.

In a similar vein, there have been times when I was so exhausted by motherhood that I was counting the years until I would be able to do other things again, when I once again would have more time to myself. Here, too, I was willing away time, instead of just enjoying the present.

I now understand that each of these projects -- fighting cancer, having a fulfilling career, and raising happy children -- is a process as well as a goal. Living with children has resulted in less time to complete my work, but it has also taught me to differentiate between the important issues and the merely pressing ones.

My daily juggling act does occasionally throw me off balance. But in some wonderful ways it also keeps my life more in balance than it ever was before. During a particularly stressful day at the office, I look forward to coming home at night. When Christopher or Maya have one of their fussier moments, I look forward to escaping to my intellectual work. And when I am due at the doctor's office for yet another checkup, I look forward to both mothering and academic work.

No, I don't think my life will ever be the same as it was before. And having cancer has not made me a better person, nor has being a mom. But they have helped me to keep things in perspective. And while my priorities might shift from time to time, I now realize that it is important for me to stay involved in all three areas of my life. For me at least, the juggling act is a necessity not only to reach the goal, but also to enjoy the process.