Her fifth child, Heath, is living proof that Brenda Bickford is healthy again after a bout with colon cancer.
PERU – Two-week-old Heath is a miracle baby. At least that’s what his proud parents, Brenda and Mitch Bickford, believe.
Not only is the tiny bundle the first boy in the family, having four older sisters, but he was born after his mother survived colon cancer and the stresses and worries of chemotherapy.
“The Lord gave us Heath in his own time,” said Brenda.
Discovering the cancer six years ago was a shock to Brenda, now 41, and Mitch, 38.
Their youngest at the time, Holli, born in October 1996, was only a few months old when Brenda began having pains in her abdomen, something she thought was from the exercising she had been doing to get back in shape.
Mitch finally convinced her to see a doctor.
Even then, no one at first thought those pains were cancer-related.
Brenda had her appendix out, and along with it, a presumed abscess. That abscess turned out to be malignant.
“I was all alone when the doctor came into my room to tell me,” said Brenda. “It was a total shock. I wasn’t even waiting for test results. I didn’t know they were sending the mass away.”
The news came on March 27, 1997. The cancer was in Stage 3. When Mitch heard the news, he broke down and cried.
“I realize now that that’s why the Lord had the doctor tell me alone,” Brenda said.
“I could not warm up, I felt so cold,” he said of the devastating news about his wife.
But over the next few months, with support from friends and fellow church members from the Faith Baptist Church in Peru, and their strong religious faith, the family got through the many weeks of intense chemotherapy that frequently caused mouth pain along with thinning hair. The mouth pain was so bad that Brenda often thought of stopping the chemotherapy. But she didn’t.
“It was scary thinking about me being gone, of the children without me, of Mitch remarrying,” she said.
So she went for her week-long treatments faithfully, often bringing her four young girls along.
At ages 5, 4, 3, and six months, the girls could brighten up the spirits of others who were undergoing chemotherapy at the same time, Brenda said.
“It was so unique. Many people in the treatments didn’t have a lot of hope,” she said.
Her two older girls, Heidi, now 11, and Hilde, now 10, remember some of the pain their mother went through, and some of their feelings.
“I remember I was scared,” said Heidi. “I would ask Mom if she would die. I did a lot of praying.”
Heidi has written much of that part of her life, as well as almost everything else, down in her diary, which she started at age 6. “It’s usually for stories, but everybody is in it.”
Hilde also remembers going to the nursery at the church so her mother could rest.
Through it all Brenda said she was open with her four daughters about her illness. Their religious faith and the letters and calls and food from friends helped them out.
After five years of treatment, frequent colon tests and no reappearance of a cancer, Brenda’s doctor gave the couple the go-ahead to have another child. That was in March, 2002.
Now, 16 months later, there is Heath.
“If I had not had cancer, maybe more children would have come, but maybe we wouldn’t have had him,” Brenda said.
The cancer experience also opened Mitch’s eyes to so much more around him.
“It makes you a lot more compassionate toward others, so much more aware,” he said.
And the four girls, Heidi, Hilde, Haley and Holli, once known as the “4H club” because of their names, are joined by a fifth H, Heath. He weighed in at 8 pounds, 9 ounces on July 24.
Because of Brenda’s bout with colon cancer, each of her children will have to be tested from age 25 on because the disease sometimes runs in families.
But for now, Brenda will be home with her five children, homeschooling them while their father works as a part-time postal employee and newspaper carrier.
When Brenda first learned of her cancer, she said she turned to her Bible. And she opened it to the Book of Psalms and read, “Hope and trust in the Lord.”
She did.
eadams@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
