Five years ago today I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was at home. I got a phone call. I gestured to my husband, who was working from home, to come up from his office to the kitchen. This was a Serious Call, and it was on the landline. I got off the phone. I told him. We hugged. I left for work.
On the way to work, I made my first phone call of many, sent my first text. It is horrible to tell people you love that you have cancer, because they worry. You can practically see the worry start and how it wraps around them like a wet blanket that’s coming unstrung. It threatens to drag them down, and you do not want to be responsible for that.
But me? I am good with bad news. I am great at bad times. I was made for crisis. You can tell me the very worst thing and I will take it in and I will not run screaming. I was made to float when you think you will drown - grab onto me. Just don’t ask me to break your heart, because I do not want to do that. I refuse.
So, this was not the worst thing that ever happened to me, but I was afraid, because I knew it was going to rock the world of my ten year old, whose experience with breast cancer was that you have it, and then you die. And my husband, who would have to be my caretaker, and my close friends, who had watched me lose my mom two years before, and my father, to whom this would be a nightmare coming true.
I knew I could deal with this. I was prepared. My mom and I had spoken about what I would do if I ever got diagnosed: how many cancer centers I would get opinions from; what choices I would make regarding surgery and reconstruction; how open I would be about my diagnosis. Conversations like these, which we humans instinctively shy away from, are my wheelhouse - I get them. I know why they need to happen. Years before I went to school for social work, before I learned the skills and the value of vulnerability, we leveled with each other.
But I was angry. I have no issue with smokers - honestly, I love the smell of someone lighting a cigarette, because it reminds me of hanging out in NYC in my 20s - but I found myself irrationally wanting to yell at people smoking outside the office complex near my home. I had cancer and they got to smoke? Not fair!
I was angry that my daughter was afraid. I was angry that this was hurting my people. I was annoyed to hell that I needed to have a thousand blood tests, especially the genetic testing, which left me with a horrible bruise on my hand, pain so bad that I couldn’t even cut my food at a restaurant. Want to feel old and sick? Ask a friend who is younger than you to cut your dinner. (The lighting was also so dim that I couldn’t read the menu - I had just turned 40). We laughed, so we didn’t cry.
So, no, I did not sail through this with unusual grace and calm and purpose. It was an easy diagnosis, it was an easy time, comparatively, by all accounts. But it fucking sucked. Cancer was not, and never is, a gift.
The last time I wrote on this blog, I was months away from a 3rd cancer related surgery, and a year away from my 4th, which was possibly the hardest recovery out of all of them. I say cancer related, because while my bilateral mastectomy in 2014 removed my breasts, skin, nipples, breast tissue, and cancer, the other 3 surgeries were directly related to my diagnosis. The second was reconstructive surgery, which put in permanent implants in place of my temporary ones. The third was to remove my ovaries, which took place on October 28, 2016 - three years ago today and on my two year cancerversary. This surgery put me into menopause at the age of 42. The fourth was a hysterectomy, removing my uterus and cervix. In between surgeries 3 and 4, I had a uterine cancer scare, with multiple biopsies and even a D and C coming back inconclusive.
That sucked, too.
But how did it change me? That is what I've been mulling over.
It changed my body image, because my body changed radically and kept changing. I have healed some of that with time, and some with the help of some loving and amazing humans who have given me radical acceptance. That has been an unexpected surprise.
I have different boundaries now. I know I physically cannot do some things on certain days, because of the chronic pain I have, and I've started to speak up about that in more productive ways. I'm coming to a place of no shame - pain is pain, and it's not my fault. On the contrary, it's a sign of my survival.
I am committed to a life that works for me. This includes my working environment, and the type of work I do. The company I keep. How I spend my free time. If you know me from social media, you see an onslaught of images that speak to travel, Broadway plays, Disney trips, concerts, activities. Time with friends, time with family. I don't have a bucket list, but I do have conversations with myself that ask if this is adding or subtracting to my life. I try to balance my need to be alone and recharge and my desire to live as much as I can, and to say yes to things that challenge me and feed my soul. I carpe the hell out of the diem. I want to leave this world with a million memories, and I want you to have so many of me that you can't pick your favorite.
I've learned it's okay to make new friends. I say this with hesitation, because my instinct as a human being is to keep to myself - but my choice when I got diagnosed was to be open and vulnerable, and my choice now is to stay open and vulnerable. I've lost people I loved in the last 5 years, to death and to cutoff, and those losses still hurt. But it would be a sad life if I stopped learning and loving and losing. Or, more to the point, it wouldn't be very "me". I am made for human connection, it's the thing that feeds my soul the most. So, maybe my heart will be broken a few hundred more times - and that's okay. Grief is the price of love. I choose deep love and connection.
I am acutely aware that while the days may be long, life is short, and it is hard, but precious. "Brutiful" is what writer Glennon Doyle calls it. Beautiful and brutal at the same time. Everything in my life, that I have lived through, and that I have witnessed, has taught me this. So that is why I want to acknowledge what was hard, what is real, while I celebrate. It is never one or the other. Happy and sad. Joy and sorrow. They walk hand in hand.
I am acutely aware that while the days may be long, life is short, and it is hard, but precious. "Brutiful" is what writer Glennon Doyle calls it. Beautiful and brutal at the same time. Everything in my life, that I have lived through, and that I have witnessed, has taught me this. So that is why I want to acknowledge what was hard, what is real, while I celebrate. It is never one or the other. Happy and sad. Joy and sorrow. They walk hand in hand.
I'd like to tell you that I became more grateful and spiritual and deeply connected, that I stop and smell the roses, but I think I always did this. I am definitely the weirdo that notices the pattern the rain makes and how leaves smell and the way the sun hits that spot. I take pleasure in the really small things. I'm really lucky to be here, on this earth. To know you. To live my life.
I hope that in 5 years I can write this same type of self indulgent navel gazing reflection, and that there are still some of you to read it. But, until there is a cure, I ask you to consider donating to Metavivor, which directly funds research into metastatic breast cancer. This research is so important for the women and men living with this disease, and the ones yet to be diagnosed.
www.metavivor.com
And, thank you. I knew I was not alone, and that's because I was loved and supported. I'm so grateful.
Song title from "One More Day" by Rob Thomas
