I’m halfway done with chemo, and coming up fast on my first three-month scan. Translation: about a week from now, I will begin the next stage of this weird new life before I’ve even come close to finishing the last.
First, I had the diagnosis which confirmed I had cancer, where it was visible, and what kind it was. Then, I had surgery to see if that visible cancer could be removed: In my case, it could and it was.
That was an endpoint, a sorting-hat type of moment that people who have never had the diagnosis do not readily understand. Every time I go into the treatment area – the big long rooms lined with pink vinyl recliners – I meet members of the two house teams. There are people like me who have no apparent active cancer in their bodies. There are also people unlike me who do.
I don’t know how others feel about that distinction but for me, it is everything. It is the difference between feeling I am headed towards life rather than headed towards death. Of course, the CAT scan could prove me wrong. Any of the forthcoming three-month scans might do that. I’ll have twenty before I’m fully in the clear.
This life immediately ahead of me, this life that has been granted to me, is nothing like the life I had before. For me, cancer is a life sentence that I have to shoulder and somehow work around for as long as I have to live. I’ve joined the ranks of 14.7 million Americans who are living with cancer, in some form, at any given moment. We are living with it.
For this reason, I find it largely unhelpful to look at the statistics. Doctors continually speak to me about the five-year mark: that if people survive five years from the date of diagnosis without developing more cancer, they are considered to be out of the woods. Twice now, cancerous material has appeared somewhere in my abdomen – the first time three years ago as a tiny trace in my uterus, this second time now as a grape-sized mass in my lymph node. It is foolish to say those facts form anything other than a pattern or a tendency.
So here I am: I have recurring cancer. That’s not in doubt and it’s not the product of negative thinking: It’s my reality. Here’s another dose of realism: in a very real way, it makes me feel as if I have another chronic illness. If that sounds deflective or just plain nuts, consider it like this: I’ve lived with cancer hanging over my head for almost four years already. I’ve lived. The immediate goal of treatment is to make me cancer-free – but the shadow of cancer will hover over me for the rest of of my life, whether it appears inside me again or not. For the rest of my life. If that’s not the very definition of chronic, what is?
Don’t mistake resolve for resignation: I’ve drawn a short straw and I am not accepting that gracefully. However, I am grounding my expectations in twenty-first century medicine and medical science. Five years is a long time in the current climate, with treatments and support drugs improving every day. It stands to reason that if, Goddess forbid, I do have to fight cancer for a third time in some form or another, I can defeat it again. I’d rather not, but it is pointless to deny the truth: this is my life now.
medicinal sausage 