What Doesn't Kill You...

Six weeks ago my daughter stood at the starting line of an 80m hurdles heat in her running bib and jersey, no spikes on her feet just normal running shoes, only having jumped a real hurdle in a race setting before. Track was for fun!

It was the cities competition in Toronto. She won her heat. We weren't expecting this at all!

Then we ran to SickKids.

She sat in that hospital waiting room still in her bib, hospital bracelet now on her wrist alongside her race number, and received a cancer diagnosis. Papillary thyroid cancer. The lump in her neck we'd assumed was a swollen gland from a cold, wasn't.

Nobody wants to hear the word cancer. Full stop. And yet, we were told quickly and repeatedly that if you are ever going to get it, this is the one. Highly curable. No oncology required. We held onto that. Hard.

So we raced back to the track and arrived just in time for the finals heat. She ran her heart out and qualified for OFSAA! Wow. Complete awe.

She is sixteen years old. She is my hero.

The surgery was July 3rd. One day before her sweet sixteenth birthday.

Four hours. Two incredible surgeons. Her thyroid and several lymph nodes removed. When it was over, we were told the nerves were intact. The cancer had behaved. Everything came out cleanly.

Then came the hard part.

Two IV ports. Two drains coming out of her neck, filling continuously with blood and fluid, that she had to carry with her everywhere. A throat wrecked from intubation, and a stack of pills she had to swallow anyway. Screaming neighbours. Pokes. Blood draws every few hours. Visits from ENT. Endocrinology. Very little sleep. Very little rest.

The first time she got up to use the bathroom, she passed out, gown on, IV tower beside her, drains hanging from fresh wounds on her neck.

Days one and two were awful. I won't sugarcoat it.

But every day after that, she got stronger. Incrementally. Quietly. Stubbornly.

Her neck was stiff. The drains made it hard to move. She was angry, frustrated, exhausted, emotional — all of it completely earned. And between those moments, there was something else. Something I don't have a better word for than grit. An aliveness that refused to be flattened.

Yesterday, she came home.

I keep coming back to the phrase what doesn't kill you makes you stronger — and honestly, I've always found it a little cliche.

But watching my daughter this week, it is deeply landing with me.

It doesn't mean the hard thing was good. It doesn't mean you should be grateful for it, or that it happened for a reason, or any of the other things people say when they don't know what else to say.

It means your body and your mind learn something in the muck that they cannot learn anywhere else.

They learn: I survived that.

And once you know that. once it lives in your body as a real memory and not just a concept, nothing looks quite as impossible as it did before.

She is sixteen. She already knows this. She knew it at the start line in her running bib. She knew it in the waiting room with her race number still pinned to her chest. She knew it every time she got up to walk the hospital corridor, drains in tow, jaw set.

We are built to do hard things. I have always believed this. But I have never seen it so clearly as I have this past week, watching her.

I am so proud of her it makes my heart ache.

To anyone reading this who is in the middle of their own hard thing — you don't have to be grateful for it. You don't have to reframe it or find the lesson while you're still bleeding.

You just have to keep going.

The strength is being built whether you feel it or not.