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how i care for breast cancer: ‘you have to take as much off their plate as you possibly can’
gordon wong had “no time to feel bad” for himself because he needed to ensure his wife jessica was well cared for and could take time to prioritize herself through breast cancer
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gordon wong helped clear his wife's plate through two breast cancer diagnoses, ensuring that she could put everything she had to getting better.
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gordon wong and his wife, jessica whiteside, met while standing in a line at western university. their last names, listed in alphabetical order, placed them next to each other, where they struck up a conversation and became friends. years later, they reconnected, eventually starting their journey as husband and wife in 2005.
together, the couple worked through their careers and raised two children, who are now 17 and 15.
due to gordon’s work in oil and gas, they moved around often, first starting in toronto, and then cycling between calgary and houston for several years until settling in calgary during the covid-19 pandemic.
four years prior, though, they got the devastating news: jessica had breast cancer.
“she was in her mid-40s, so totally unexpected,” said gordon, recalling the initial shock of the diagnosis. “the kids were pretty young, and i had a big job in houston, and that was kind of the start of it.”
at the time, they were living in houston, a place gordon notes is like winning a lottery ticket if diagnosed with cancer, because his wife was cared for at md anderson cancer center, which is ranked no. 1 for cancer care in the united states.
according to gordon, that ranking demonstrated their care, as all of her healthcare team was present at her appointments to collaboratively decide on her best course of treatment. she had an aggressive tumour that was growing fast, and this approach made the entire process that much easier to deal with.
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“it wasn’t like you had to go to one (specialist), then make another appointment to go see another one. they all came in,” he said. “that was really, really good.”
his wife’s care plan consisted of chemotherapy first, then surgery and radiation to “clean up” the remaining cancer cells.
gordon and jessica, who “tend to be planners,” dove headfirst into her care, ensuring that jessica could get what she needed while gordon held down the fort for everything else.
planning for breast cancer care
when jessica first began chemotherapy, she chose to plan it strategically so she could maintain as prominent a role in her former life as possible. she chose to do each appointment on a thursday, which gordon notes, wasn’t done without thought.
“she would get to her chemo on thursday. on friday, she’d still be feeling great because of the steroids in her system. by saturday, she was feeling really bad. by sunday, she couldn’t move, but by monday, she was starting to feel better again, so she could take the kids to school and pick them up.”
she wanted her “sickest moments” to be those when gordon was there to pick up the slack with the home and family responsibilities so that she could focus solely on her own health.
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during her treatments, gordon and his wife had to pivot from planning weeks in advance to looking at the moments in front of them to ensure their boat sailed as smoothly as possible.
“how do we feed the children tonight, right? if my wife can’t get up, okay, let’s feed the children and then we’ll figure out how to get them to bed,” said gordon. “it’s little things like that. but you just deal with the problem, the immediate problem in front of you and not the ones that are next week, because next week’s problem, we just didn’t have the capacity to deal with it.”
they also had to figure out how to tell their children, who were four and six at the time, that their mother had cancer because “at some point it’s going to become noticeable … that mom’s lost her hair, that mom can’t pick you up.”
“that was hard, you know. that was a step we had to kind of get through,” gordon said, noting that md anderson and their social workers walked them through the entire process, helping them figure out the best way to go about it.
breast cancer recurrence: ‘you did know what to expect and it was going to be bad’
gordon continued to work as much as he could throughout his wife’s cancer care, taking advantage of the care in houston as well as his excellent insurance. because they kept as much normalcy as possible in their lives, the future they had planned continued to be a part of gordon’s mindset.
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“i once made an unthinkable joke. we were driving somewhere and there was a billboard ad on the radio, my wife’s in the middle of cancer treatment and i made a joke about, ‘oh, when we retire, we can go do this,’ and she started to cry because there was no guarantee that she was kind of making it to retirement,” he said, noting that the little things like that would pop up when he wasn’t thinking about the cancer.
after her treatment, though, jessica was given a bright new future to look forward to. she was given the all-clear, with the caveat that the type of breast cancer she had could recur, and if it did, would likely do so in five years.
so, when the five-year mark hit and her mammogram was clear, gordon and jessica thought it had all worked out. but six months later, they’re world was shattered yet again.
“in five months, she ended up with either two or three tumours in the same area,” he said. “the cancer was back.”
during the first bout, they had no idea what to expect, but the second time, they were more prepared. however, as gordon puts it, the second time may have been worse because “you did know what to expect and it was going to be bad.”
jessica took over scheduling her treatments again, while gordon took on everything else.
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“things were kind of like a workplace. everyone has their roles and their responsibilities, and when somebody’s out unexpectedly sick, everyone just kind of picks up what needs to be done, right?”
during her treatments, the chemotherapy didn’t take as well as it did the first time, growing five per cent larger than it had been when she started. they had to up the dose, which was “really bad” according to gordon.
“her bones hurt,” he said. “she was nauseous and throwing up.”
the first time, her hair would fall out in small clumps, but this time, it was handfuls.
“there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “you just have to deal with the problem in front of you. for most caregivers, you’re going to be busy, and you’re going to have to deal with it because you don’t want to put that burden on your sick spouse. they need to focus on themselves. they can’t be worried about you. they can’t be worried about who’s looking after the kids. you need to take as much off their plate as you possibly can.”
at the time, gordon still had a pretty demanding job, but his employer was incredibly understanding of the situation, which allowed him to be there for jessica and the family while she went through cancer treatment all over again.
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he also began thinking of an unimaginable future without his wife in it.
“we were doing some financial planning and the financial planner was going to do some projections, like your expenses and how much money you’re going to need in retirement, all that sort of stuff,” he said. “but i have a pension plan that pays me until i die. when i die, it goes to my spouse. but if i don’t have a spouse, that’s it. it just ends.”
he had to run his retirement projections with his financial planner if jessica didn’t make it through the second time around.
luckily, according to gordon, “it all worked out,” but the process of getting there changed his perception of what their lives would look like.
using the time you have through breast cancer
gordon notes that throughout the ordeal, he had “no time to feel bad” for himself because he needed to ensure jessica was well cared for and could take time to prioritize herself.
his vision for their future involved him working until he was about 60, but after his wife’s cancer diagnosis and the passing of his father in 2023, as she was getting better, he realized that work didn’t have to be as front and centre as he had initially thought.
“i decided to call it quits,” he said of early retirement. they had the means to do so, and he wanted to spend as much time with his family as possible.
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“my boss at the time was convinced that i was leaving to go take another job somewhere else, and i told her that my only kpi, my only key performance indicator, for the next few years was to annoy my children and be world-class at doing it,” he said.
he now loves that he’s been able to spend his time with his family, stating that it’s easy to get his teenage sons to agree to spend time with him as long as food is involved.
“they’re food motivated,” he joked. “it’s a fun time to be at home to be annoying.”
he says that everything that he’s gone through with his wife and family has really “put in focus the things” that are truly important.
“in my case, it’s time. you can’t add any more time. you can’t buy any more time. so, how is it you want to use the time that you have? and this is one of the ways i want to use my time.”
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