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Editor's Note:
Meg Jacobs is Professor of History at Princeton University and a cancer and covid-19 survivor.
Follow her on Twitter @ MegJacobs100.
The opinions expressed in this comment belong to the author.
Read more opinion on CNN here.
(CNN) -
As soon as I received the news that I had covid-19, last week, I cried.
I wasn't worried about myself.
I was worried about my four children.
Not by caring for them;
I have a very competent husband and the children are old enough to vote or are close to voting.
No, I panicked because my covid-19 diagnosis triggered the memory of when I received my cancer diagnosis.
I also received that information by phone.
A routine mammogram, at age 49, led to the discovery of a mass and a biopsy.
For four days I waited for the results.
Finally, just as I was about to leave the house to take my father-in-law to a doctor's appointment, I saw the radiologist's number appear on my phone.
We had a short and effective conversation.
He gave me the name and number of a breast surgeon and told me not to wait too long.
"So if someone asks me if I have cancer, the answer is yes?"
"Correct," he replied.
I hung up, took my father-in-law to the appointment, and waited until I got home before calling my husband to tell him the news.
The whole time, my only thought was, "What will this do to my family?"
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For the next several weeks, I was concerned about my health. After all the initial assurances about early detection of the mass and its removal with successful surgery, clean margins, and nothing in the lymph nodes, I got the results of my genomic test. These results basically told me that my tumor, despite all the promising early signs, was at high risk of recurrence. My first doctor brought chemotherapy to the table; several weeks and tests later, my second doctor removed that option.
At first, I tried to inject some lightness into the difficult road ahead.
She was joking about the elegant zippered leather binder that contained the treatment plan she had received, along with a bottle of water, a purse, and many other items from the breast center.
But the six-week daily routine of going to the hospital, stripping, climbing on the table, and receiving radiation began to wear me down.
The horrible burn that comes with treatment stinks too, much worse than the sunburn that every kid got in the 1970s. And I'll always have the dozen tiny tattoos that radiation techs say were hitting me on the spot. Right.
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Covid reminded me of my fight against cancer
Of course, being diagnosed with cancer and receiving treatment was difficult. But what was most difficult was thinking about what my cancer would mean for my children. They were younger then. My two young daughters were just starting high school and the oldest was a third year student. My oldest daughter was weeks away from applying to college. My only breakdown, publicly at least, in dealing with the big "C" occurred when she and I were touring the university and had to fly home separately because the airline had oversold the flight from O'Hare airport. , from Chicago, to LaGuardia, from New York. In a vain attempt to persuade the ticket agency to let me travel with my daughter, I yelled, "I have cancer!" (It didn't work.)
I'm not sure what I thought my diagnosis would do to my children.
Distract them from their homework?
Orphan them at mealtime?
Or maybe leave them orphans forever?
I certainly know what that kind of loss is like.
My father died of a massive heart attack when he was 47 and I was 12. He was playing his weekly Sunday tennis game with my mother when he collapsed.
She tried to give him CPR, but he was already dead before the ambulance arrived.
One day he was here, the next he wasn't.
I wrote a note on a piece of yellow paper and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his suit while he lay in the coffin.
He was leaving and I wanted him to take something from me.
As painful as my heartache was (and is) to my father, I had survived his loss.
So why was I so afraid that my children would not survive if I was not around?
The answer: I worried that I would not be able to protect my children from their own fears and anxieties.
Turns out they knew a lot, even more than I did, thanks to the endless stream of "Jane the Virgin."
When there was a possibility that she would need chemotherapy, they knew all about treating her with hypodermic caps.
My children are strong and serene: three very excited beautiful girls and one sweet, sweet boy.
They have been through divorce, remarriage, and the merger of two families into one.
And yet he didn't want to scare them or make them care more than who they were in love with or what outfit they should choose for the next day.
I wanted to protect them, not cause them pain.
But life just doesn't work that way.
Try as hard as you can, you can't protect your kids from everything.
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After cancer came the covid
Now, three years have passed since my diagnosis and treatment.
I go to all my scan and test appointments.
I take my medication.
So far everything in order.
But, in 2020, the covid-19 arrived.
For almost two years, we have all worked to protect our children and keep them safe from this rare and strange disease.
My family left New York City on March 16, 2020, just as the city became a focus of the pandemic.
For a few days, we used tissues we got from the local Five & Dime in our temporary city, for a few weeks we washed fruits and groceries (I still do).
We quickly learned more, physically distanced ourselves, wore masks, stayed away for nine months, and went online to classes.
We all protected ourselves together.
They were safe.
I protected them.
We made it work, we finally saw some friends outside, we moved back home, and we happily support getting the kids back to school.
We received our vaccinations and our boosters.
And then he gave me covid-19, exactly what my family had feared.
My husband and I went to dinner at our friends' apartment, where they were all vaccinated three times.
It was our first or second dinner in years at someone else's home, drinking wine, talking politics, lounging.
We all feel so good to be together again.
Five days later, just after leaving the hospital for a biannual breast exam, I received the news that those friends had tested positive.
My heart sank.
Four days later, I also tested positive.
When I got the call with my covid-19 results, I felt like I was diagnosed with cancer again. He knew it was not the same, of course. But I was afraid that getting sick would cause pain for my family.
We are very fortunate that my covid-19 symptoms were not severe;
I felt like I had a mild cold, a few colds, a cough or two.
The worst part was being separated from my family.
I really wanted my two older daughters to come home from college for the holidays.
But instead, we are separated.
My husband, who somehow escaped the pathogens from dinner, took the four children and left town, again.
They did a new family group chat and I wasn't on it.
My "Covid-cation" is the first time I have been alone in two years.
Since the pandemic began, we have had a constant bond.
When the world collapses, all you want to do is protect your children.
Because that's what parents do.
They don't let danger through the front door, if they can help it.
Now it seems that the worst and the best is upon us.
It seems quite likely that my children will contract COVID-19, if not from me, from someone else, but it is unlikely to be serious.
And see that I'm fine.
Thanks to science, we can really cure diseases.
So maybe, in some complicated, exhausting, frustrating, terrifying and horrible way, the lesson is: we will survive.
We cannot protect our children from everything.
That's always true, and we've all had a masterclass on that in the last two covid-filled years.
But maybe we, I, should realize that that's okay.
I have survived the big "C" twice.
Cancer and covid-19.
And my children are fine.