MT. JULIET, Tenn. (WTVF) — Being a mom is hard enough, but Jessie Gleason is also juggling something else.
“I asked the doctor to repeat it and she said ‘you have cancer’,” Gleason recalled. “Then I had a double mastectomy. I had tissue expanders put in on each side.”
The single mom balances cancer treatments and parenting all on her own, “and I lost both my parents and my brother so it’s just been like one thing after the other, after the other,” she said.
Gleason is working to complete 25 rounds of radiation. She goes five days a week. “It’s just been like emotionally exhausting and physically exhausting,” she said.
Most days she makes it work, but Friday wouldn't have been one of those days.
“I said something briefly in passing to the nurse- ‘hey I don’t think I can make it on Friday’- and I explained to her the situation.”
She explained that she couldn’t find child care and would have to cancel radiation. A few moments later, her doctor called her into his room. “He said ‘I want to offer you something, you won’t hurt my feelings if you say no, but I have twin 19-year-old daughters and my wife and they would be more than happy to come play and sit with your son so you can come to treatment tomorrow,’” Gleason said.
It gave patient care a whole new meaning.
Friday she came to treatment only to find Dr. Cohen’s wife waiting to take care of her 3-year-old Ki. “It makes me tear up even thinking about it. He didn’t have to do that,” she said.
So if you ask her how she juggles it all Gleason will tell you it's small gestures of kindness, like that of her doctor's, that make being this mom a little bit easier.
“There’s still really good people in this world, there really are," she said.
