It’s My Cancer and I’ll Cry if I Want To

Cancer is not the best thing that ever happened to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love and admire all of my fellow “you’ve got cancer” humans. Hands down. No doubt.

We share a cancer bond that no one else on earth can boast. We’ve each grown our own massive networks of fear neurons that mirror each other from across the globe. It’s kind of like we all went to the same summer camp in 5th grade and we know the inside jokes, the code words, and the secret pranks.

But come on. You guys have to let me experience this thing my own way.

I mean I let you flaunt your “cancer survivor” flags on every flagpole. I let you share your “cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me” stories all over the Internet. I let you call cancer a blessing while you smile through the horror.

But gosh darn it. (Foot stamp) It’s my cancer and I’ll cry if I want to.

I’m not saying I didn’t learn any life lessons but it is by no means a blessing full of life-altering meaning. If it’s the best thing that ever happened to you, then own it, I’ll be the first to pat you on the back and clap for your story. But know that there isn’t a single life lesson I couldn’t have learned from some other teacher.

Cancer Life Lesson #1: Everybody’s gotta die sometime

We all have to face our own mortality at some point. Unfortunately, for most of us, it takes a life-threatening circumstance to make us wake up and take note of an end that’s been looming in front of us since birth.

I remember waking up one day and all I had scheduled was another round of radiation. Nothing else. Someone else was tending the kids. Someone else was minding my job.

I thought, I don’t even know if this is working. Radiation is killing what healthy cells I have left. Why am I doing this? I’m going to die anyway.

Suddenly time was tearing at the tapestry of my life, leaving a hole here and a thin place there. I spent my days fighting to live, knowing I would die anyway. There was nothing I could to do to halt the inevitable, only prolong it. Someday — cancer or no cancer — I would arrive at the end.

I let the realization grip me. And as it did, it squeezed from within me a fresh approach to each new day. If I’m going to die soon, then I’d better get busy living and writing and loving.

Great life lesson, but not enough to mark my cancer diagnosis day as “best day ever.”

Cancer Life Lesson #2: I know how I do not want to die.

Truth: I sort of already knew this life lesson, but the cancer helped put the final nail in the “oh no you don’t, I aint’ going out like that” coffin.

As an ICU nurse, I had already formed many opinions about dying in the ICU environment. It wasn’t pretty and, somehow — in a world of uncertainty — it seemed it was an end I could avoid, with the right paperwork anyway.

I didn’t want a breathing tube down my throat, a feeding tube down my nose, and peeing tube up my urethra. I didn’t want to fade in and out of conscienceless without the chance to say goodbye, I’m sorry, and I love you. Facing cancer made me certain that an ICU bed would not suit me as the launch pad into the great abyss.

I moved toward getting a medical power of attorney sorted out. But then ended up getting a divorce instead. That’s another post.

Wonderful life lesson but still not enough to embrace the “blessing” side of cancer.

Cancer Life Lesson #3: God doesn’t exist

I’ve just lost most of you right here. That’s okay. It’s still my cancer and I’ll disbelieve if I want to.

Cancer opened my eyes to a lot of things. The only reason god existed for me was because I believed it. Deductive logic told me that if god exists because I believe then when I stop believing, he or she would disappear.

It was true. Poof. Suddenly I realized there was no threshold to cross at the end. There was no mansion in the sky or loving father to forgive and guide me.

What a relief. A weight off my shoulders.

I was raised in a strict religious environment where the holes they buried doctrines in were dug deep and the holy observations that separated ‘us from them’ were wider than the valley of good and evil. So to finally be able to realize that life is just life and that each day is a gift to be lived to its fullest renovated my belief system.

Suddenly everyone around me was just who they were, void of labels and drained of the evil god said they were born with. I could save the right and wrong for morals instead of judgement. I could save the good and bad for ethics instead of criticism.

This was big for me. Not enough of a life changer to thank cancer for knocking at my door but enough to make me grateful that life gives us chance after chance to grow and learn, if we pay attention. I had been conditioned to follow the rules and swallow the red pill every Sunday and cancer was the cure.

Instead of the best thing that ever happened to me perhaps cancer is a necessary evil from which the zing and zest of life can sprout . . . if I let it. Or maybe cancer is just what it sounds like, a gruesome disease with one goal in mind: to kill me.

You know, I think I just realized at this very moment that the best thing about cancer is that it isn’t the best thing that ever happened to me.