My father is a cancer survivor. I do not use the term lightly – he had more than one brush with death during his treatment. Now, several years after being declared cancer-free, his life is still impacted by the disease. It has been an ugly, tear-filled, dramatic experience for my father and our entire family.
In contrast, my entire cancer experience from diagnosis to the “cancer free” designation took less time and heartache than most kitchen renovations.
It doesn’t feel appropriate to say I’m lucky (“lucky” and “getting cancer” just don’t jive), but fortunately for me, my cancer was entirely treatable with an impressively high five-year survivor rate of 95%. That’s not to say that there weren’t some dramatic components to my cancer experience. I was only 37 when I was diagnosed. I had four children, the youngest of which was only 18 months old. I was diagnosed at stage IV with a rare cancer that usually only preyed upon grizzled old men who spent the majority of their lives inhaling nicotine and whisky. Treatment was brutal. My throat was burned to a crisp by radiation and pain meds made me vomit. I lost weight. I lost hair.
And then it was over.
Really. Just like that.
I went for my first run (ok, jog) just three weeks after my last dosage of radiation. Less than five months after diagnosis, I was given my cancer free card. Two years later, memories of my treatment are similar to those of giving birth. I have distinct recollections of pain and suffering, but no real association to it. Those friends and family who were witnesses to my treatment and recovery remarked on my strength, courage, and determination. For the first time in my life I was told that I was inspiring. I was a survivor.
Only I wasn’t. There is probably some statistic out there that could claim that I was more likely to die in a car crash within spitting distance to my house than I was to die of tonsil cancer at 37 in an otherwise amazingly healthy body. I’m not a survivor for being cancer-free any more than I am because I managed to get my minivan home in one piece. Rather than survive cancer as so many can rightly claim to have done, I endured it.
Enduring is so not dramatic. There are no ribbons to wear for tonsil cancer, no three day walks. There is only endurance, but that’s the point. Cancer isn’t always a death sentence, though we all treat it like it is. While that attitude can be helpful when sympathetic family and friends come out in supportive droves, it can also lead the person with cancer to believe that to go from diagnosis to cancer-free is some miraculous, dramatic journey where only the strongest, toughest souls will survive. Sometimes cancer isn’t a life-or-death war that needs to be fought. Sometimes it’s just a really crappy illness that you have to get through.
I believe that there is a time that comes for all cancer victims when we need to decide whether or not the disease defines who we are. The drama that surrounds cancer can be a heady drug – it can make us feel very special to hear others tell us how strong, courageous, and inspirational we are. It can make us lonely to watch the well of sympathy run dry as friends and family return to making meals for their own tables. Getting back to normalcy after treatment can be physically exhausting.
Some, like my father, will always be defined, in some part, by his cancer experience. His physical scars serve as ever-present reminders of his sickness. For those of us who aren’t like my father, we should embrace our good fortune and work to help others take the drama out of their cancer diagnosis. No one wanted to tell me, “No, really, you are going to be FINE.” What if I was one of the 5% with tonsil cancer who wasn’t fine? Would I spend my eternity rising from the grave to whisper into the ears of my well-intentioned friend “You were wrong. You were wrooooooooong!”?
Maybe. But mostly I think that taking some of the drama away from the diagnosis would have dissipated much of my anxiety. I might have shed a few less tears, spent less time thinking that I was going to die. My experience with cancer wasn’t a freakish anomaly. There are others like me out there. We aren’t superheroes, we experienced no miracles, we performed no magic. We just happened to slog through a particularly intense shit storm, after which we dried ourselves off and moved on.
Cue dramatic music. We endured.
red brick, yellow door 
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