family is often what grounds us and keep us from falling off the edge in the worst moments. surviving cancer has been tough for jennifer mitchell, but it wasn’t losing her hair or the debilitating fatigue and nausea of chemo that haunt her. it was telling her husband that her leukemia had come back.
“when he walked into the house and he looked at me, he knew. he is a strong man, and he broke down and cried. i have never heard him cry. that broke my heart to have to tell him that we had to go through it all over again,” she says. “and he said to me, ‘we did it before. we will do it again. i will be by your side the whole time.’”
diagnosed with leukemia
back in 2016, jennifer was a healthy, active 40-year-old who liked to golf, snowshoe and take walks with her little dog chip. she had a job she enjoyed, helping families settle their kids into campus as manager of student housing at the grenfell campus of memorial university of newfoundland in corner brook, where she’s lived all her life. then out of the blue, she started getting pain in her hip. she thought she must be sleeping in a different position, or it was just a random ache. but it persisted.
“i made an appointment with my family doctor just to get her idea on what it could be. and at the time, she didn’t think there was anything wrong with me,” jennifer explains. her doctor recommended physiotherapy and massage which she did for a few weeks, but it wasn’t getting better. “i couldn’t do anything to resolve the issue. and it was getting to the point where i couldn’t go to work. i wasn’t sleeping properly and just in a lot of pain.”
9 minute read
