I’ll start this post by saying I am nearly 15 years cancer free, and I am fully aware of how very fortunate I am to be able to say that. How very fortunate I am to be sitting here typing these words. For that I have a level of gratitude that I will never be able to properly express to the nurses and doctors that saved my life. The same goes for my (now ex) wife. The aggressive treatment plan that my primary doctor created, the compassionate care that so many nurses provided, and the never ending and astounding bravery and support of my wife saved me.
In some ways, recovery was harder than surviving surgeries and chemotherapy and radiation treatments. There was nothing I could do to help during surgeries or those treatments. No real choices to be made about those things - do them or else. Recovery did require me to do some things, to realize some things. That did not happen quickly. Not even close to quickly.
It happened so slowly because I let fear dominate and overwhelm me for far too long. Fear was the theme of my day, every day. I was the polar opposite of so many people that I’ve seen speak powerfully about how they were going to give cancer the fight of its life, kick its ass. I was desperately worried that cancer was going to come back and finish me off.
I was filled with fear when chest pain seemed different or more painful than it was the day before. And when I would get out of breath after walking just two or three minutes. I hated to look at, avoided looking at, but knew the statistics for the survival rate for my type of cancer. The drive to the oncology office, passing a cemetery in the final section of the drive, frightened me - as did walking into the building and waiting on the doctor’s words.
My fear also felt like it was fact a lot of the time. I would watch a World Series game and think often about how this would be the last World Series I would ever watch. Hear a favorite song and think it was probably the last time I would hear it.
It would be great if I could say something about finding my inner courage as the way I broke the grip of fear - but that didn’t happen. I didn’t have the wherewithal to develop a plan to get past my fear. It just happened one day, with me as more of a passenger than the instigator of it. My mindset flipped on its own. That day it just suddenly felt obvious that this was no way to go through life, however much of it was left. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but this was my first taste of how much our mind can affect our bodies.
Once that happened, I had greater strength, much bigger energy, and stopped thinking that this was the last time I would see this, or hear that. My recovery from that point on was still probably far slower than it is for many people, but a lot of things in life improved from there. Some other hugely important things didn’t - my marriage didn’t survive cancer and the ways it changed me. I made a lot of mistakes - especially in terms of where I put most of my new energy and focus.
And there were still painful days. Telling my very young daughter why I had cancer is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Telling her that I brought it on myself because I was a smoker for far too many years, the shame in that, was enormous.
This is something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time, but I never felt I could find the right words to do it justice. I’m sure I still haven’t found them, but this feels like a decent start.
Thank you for sharing your story. It is really moving and helps me understand the perspective of one that was diagnosed. So many of my circle of friends are getting cancer diagnoses that I almost feel as if t was creeping towards me. (In fact two were recently diagnosed a few weeks apart.) Although you feel deep shame about your smoking, I just want to say that cancer is a disease with so many causes we just don't know why, sometimes. But I'm glad that you've kept healthy all these years.
Thank you again for sharing.
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