It was a beautiful summer afternoon in June at the Jersey Shore. My husband and I had taken our four year-old son to the boardwalk to play in the arcade - a rite of passage for most New Jersey children. That morning our son's eyes seemed to be crossing and he was stumbling a bit. We called the pediatrician out of minor concern because we were almost certain that he probably just needed glasses. It turned out that our son had a malignant brain tumor and had to have emergency surgery at NYU Medical Center to have it removed. The surgery was successful but our son went into an almost coma-like state for several weeks.

It was now Fourth of July weekend and I sat quietly at my son's bedside in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at NYU Hospital. I read the word "cancer" on a pamphlet given to me by my son's new oncologist. CANCER. The C word. That word put me into a trance-like state. I had read the word many times before. I had heard that people developed it and even died from it but not in my family, not in my husband's family and certainly NOT MY FOUR YEAR OLD BEAUTIFUL AND HEALTHY CHILD.

As I sat numbly in that intensive care unit, I developed a sense of panic for answers to this unbearable crisis that had to be provided instantly! This would be one of many, answer-seeking panic attacks for me. I had no choice but to call the pediatric brain surgeon "on call" that weekend. All the other surgeons were gone to enjoy their holiday weekend. I had a million questions for this "on call" surgeon and yet I wasn't even really sure why I was calling him at home. I was desperately searching for someone to say something, anything to make this surreal nightmare go away. So I paged the doctor and he quickly returned my phone call. I answered my cell phone and heard him announce himself. At that moment, what I heard in the background coming from the doctor's end, that split second of time, before I started to speak changed my outlook on the world forever. I simply heard children (presumably the doctor's children) laughing and playing and splashing in a pool. . . enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and indulging in the carefree happiness of childhood. . . and I was here . . . in the NYU PICU staring at my four year old little boy whose head was wrapped in a white turban and he had CANCER.

When I heard those children playing in the background on that phone call that day everything became clear to me. I was now one of them. I was now the mother of child with cancer. I was no longer that mother happily skipping through life ignorant of the heartaches and catastrophes that happen only to "other people". I was now one of them. It made no difference to me that it was actually my child that had developed cancer and not me. As any mother will tell you, a child is part of you. It would have been easier on me if I had developed cancer instead of my child.