Read Online The Choice by Bernadette Bohan - Free Book Online Page A

paragon of motherhood. No, we had our share of arguments and shouting matches, and they would test my patience to the limits. I would yell at them to brush their teeth, tidy their rooms, get in the car. At times they fought like cat and dog – I always seemed to be splitting up rows, and ‘Stop it, the two o’you!’ became a constant refrain. We were a normal family doing normal things. But at the same time I had such a sharp sense of the closeness of loss, the knowledge that we stand on a knife edge between happiness and sorrow. I was determined to surround them with as much love and care as I myself had been surrounded with by my own mother all those years before – a love that had given me such a strong sense of myself and had set such an example of selfless giving.
Meanwhile my oncologist was checking me and checking me. I thought I was cured; he was waiting for the cancer to come back.
What I did not know then was that once you have suffered from cancer you stand a much higher chance of getting it back, no matter how well you have responded to treatment. For the first three years after the lymphoma had disappeared, I checked myself constantly, obsessively, ever-vigilant for a sign that the cancer was returning. My appointments were scheduled for every three months for the first few years, then – the relief – every six months – a clear sign that I was doing well. We couldn’t relax completely, of course, for according to him my lymphoma had been very rare and we had no statistics to go by. However, in between the appointments I would throw myself back into the business of living with the sort of determination and vigour I had seen in my mother all those years ago. There was so much going on in my children’s lives I hardly had a chance to think about myself – indeed, I was reluctant to dwell on my own problems, knowing that the past has a habit of springing up to grab you when you least expect it. While the knowledge of what I had been through was always there, I was stubbornly keeping it at bay.
But I will never forget those regular hospital appointments. As I entered the hospital and walked down the sterile corridor to the familiar waiting room I felt as if I had never left, and all the old feelings would come flooding back. In this waiting room I might meet a woman wearing a wig, or a man whose stick-thin figure and gaunt cheeks spoke volumes. There but for the grace of God, I would think, feeling so sorry for them, but glad it was not me. ‘Hello there,’ I would chirrup to my oncologist, once in the consulting room, my false cheeriness covering my nerves. ‘How are things?’ We would chit-chat about holidays, the kids, or Ger. Then I would take off my clothes and lie down on the bed while he examined me all over, checking and re-checking my groin, back, breasts and underarms for anything sinister. Sometimes I asked him to check my glands if I thought they were swollen; or another part of me where I might have felt something a few days earlier. I would stare at his face, trying to read his mind, imagining that I could decipher my fate from the twist of his mouth or the slight frown on his forehead. I often found myself holding my breath until he said, ‘Get dressed again Bernadette, you’re fine.’
‘Are you sure now, are you quite sure?’ Relief, each time, blessed relief, flooded through me as he smiled his confirmation. And it was then that I would ask my question.
‘Can I have another baby?’
He fixed me with his gaze – kind but unbending. ‘No, Bernadette. No you can’t. As you know, I think your lymphoma may have been activated by the pregnancy hormones. There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting this may be the case. We don’t know for sure, but you simply cannot risk it. You’d be mad to give up everything you have now, everything you have survived for. Put it out of your mind – you already