To be honest, when I found out I had cancer for the second time I was relieved. I had gone more than a year trying to figure out what was wrong with my legs — some sort of weird neuromuscular thing that left me with a lot of pain and sleepless nights — and I was glad to know there was a reason. My lymphoma had returned, and was impacting the base of my spine. No problem, I thought — I beat it before and will beat it again. Foolhardy words, to be certain.
The first thing I took for granted was that eventually I could be accurately diagnosed and treated. My medical saga of trying to figure out what was wrong with me led me through the offices of:
· 3 orthopedists
· 3 neurologists
· 1 physical therapist
· 2 rheumatologists
· 1 osteopath, and
· 2 oncologists, the 2nd of which finally was able to diagnose me after a bajillion tests and diagnostic images.
With a saga like this, every doctor has to hear the whole story and none of them have the patience for it. You can write it down for them, and they won’t read it. You can tell them, even in the presence of a resident physician or attending fellow, but no one takes notes on all the details or they do so incorrectly.
Even after the diagnosis and well into my current treatment plan, I am astounded at how often I have to confront this.
My foolhardy approach to the diagnosis also took into account my first bout of cancer. I saw I had an enlarged lymph node, got it diagnosed quickly before it spread, bull-rushed through treatment and only after my hair started to grow back did I start to wonder what it was that I just endured.
Now, as I move past the initial treatment phase and into the start of a bone marrow transplant, my morning routine these days revolves around conversations with a South African friend, an emergency medicine pediatrician who survived drug resistant tuberculosis and its three years of treatment. Even if you add up the four months of chemo from my first bout of cancer with all the chemo I’ll receive this time around, the sheer quantity of toxic medicine that he received dwarfs my own.
And, during my second round of cancer treatment, he and his scarred lungs have wrestled with a COVID-19 infection. In our conversations, he urges me on while I recover from the chemo doses and I help him rally as he just pushes to keep breathing steadily.
I learned a long time ago, before cancer even, that the scope of trial testing your soul doesn’t really matter. It could be the most featherweight of crises and yet if it shakes you to your core and you manage to eke your way through, that is the most impressive of victories imaginable.
By that measure, my first bout of cancer was not quite the crisis. I glided through with the greatest of ease thanks to modern medicine coupled with excellent health insurance. My coverage throughout this second, protracted run has also been comprehensive, a blessing that too many people lack these days.
Several years after I survived my first tussle with lymphoma, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This was different. When I was diagnosed, I was working out regularly and still playing ultimate frisbee competitively. When he was diagnosed, his exercise was walking the dog three times a day. When I was diagnosed, I was eating a healthy, balanced diet. For my dad, avoiding street food was a major victory. But most importantly, I was in my mid 40s while he had just turned 80.
My dad never thought that cancer would claim him, he always thought that he would power through. And we both held onto the relative ease in which I got through as an example for how he could recover, despite our differences in age and especially the virulence of his disease. We were wrong; his struggle lasted 18 months and ended after his first overnight stay in the hospital. I stayed with him until the end, holding his hand and reading to him as he took his last breath.
And now, after several overnight hospital stays of my own, I enter the final stage of my second battle with cancer — but still holding regrets. I was supposed to have won the first round, vanquishing it completely, yet it snuck back. While the harm that this second round did to me was rather obvious — by the time I was diagnosed I could barely walk — the fingerprints it left were exceptionally hard to find. Even as I grew more and more limited, my original oncologist still insisted that it was all gone.
What I tell my daughter during times of struggle is that when you’re butting up against a brick wall, sometimes you need to just push through and sometimes you need to admit that you can’t. The secret to life is telling the two situations apart and acting appropriately. Now more than ever, during the worst pandemic in a hundred years, this holds true.
Cancer is a brick wall that the patient has to push through, or else die trying. There’s no other way around it. The regrets for past actions and beliefs need to be cast aside, there’s no room for baggage when your path takes you into a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.
This is not the elegant and graceful cancer tragedy that Hollywood and pop culture romanticize. But if you make it through the brick wall, it’s not even a tragedy. So I’ll take the struggle, put the history aside, let the baggage go, and just soldier on. In this way, cancer becomes just another phase I’ve gone through — and not the one that claims me.
