The good news continues on the cancer front. The markers in
my blood continue to drop slowly but steadily. I can no longer feel the
tumor between my ribs or the one in the muscle wall of my lower abdomen, and by
"feel" I mean either with my fingers or by the internal muscle pain
that I felt previously.
I have just finished my twelfth treatment of Caelyx and realised that I have been taking this molecule for a year now. It is by far the easiest
treatment protocol that I have had yet and the best part is that it is working.
Three years ago this month I was diagnosed with cancer. It seemed that my world had crumbled down
around me. I remember my first appointment with Dr. D and how
afraid I was, yet there was something so reassuring and hopeful about her
own lack of fear. So unlike the
scenes in the movies wherein the doctor announces “you only have X months to
live”, that meeting and all subsequent ones have been totally devoid of any futurology. I remember studying the statistics “60% of women with Stage 4 ovarian cancer didn’t live 10 years” and thinking then that ten years would be a pretty good deal.
The first year was very hard physically and psychologically. The chemo was tough, I lost my hair, I was
exhausted, and then there was the surgery and the recovery after that. I can remember being so happy to be transferred
from intensive care to a regular hospital room, and the first night that I felt
human enough to watch a bit of TV, thinking that “Top Chef” was the greatest
thing I’d seen on the air. I must have
been heavily sedated.
Then there was remission and I thought I had beaten the
beast. This led to a very short period
of euphoria, during which time Alec and Virginie were married. That certainly added to the illusion of
“everything’s gonna be all right from here on out”.
The second year was heralded in by the news that the remission was
over and it was back to business – multiple mini-tumors had appeared here and
there in my abdominal cavity. This was
even harder psychologically because the first year it seemed that there had
been a clear goal: have the chemo,
shrink the big tumors, cut them out, more chemo and then school was out. Now we were faced with finding a new molecule
that would work. For me the months of “
try, test, fail, try again” were grueling.
Although Dr. D assured me that there were plenty of candidate molecules,
I didn’t feel reassured until we finally hit upon one that gave positive results.
So year three has been coming to terms with living with cancer as
part of my routine. According to the stages
of grief, I guess that I have finally reached the acceptance stage. What do I have to grieve about if I’m still
alive? I would say that I had to accept
that my “normal” life or my life as I knew it was gone and things were never
going to be quite the same again. What I
didn’t realize is that because of the experience of having cancer, my life
could actually be richer and more meaningful than it was before.
At the end of this summer, Mr. T and I decided to take advantage of
my good medical reports to take an extended trip to the States to visit friends
and family on first the East Coast and then the West Coast. It was a pretty ambitious itinerary but worth
every minute of it since we were either re-connecting with folks we care about or
spending time on our own.
I had the unusual opportunity to finally meet “friends” that I
only knew indirectly through Facebook or by email, one being an ovarian cancer
survivor. She invited me to participate
in an ovarian cancer awareness run/walk that I accepted.
Yet another new experience.
So I found myself on a big mall parking lot, surrounded by a sea of
folks all out to support ovarian cancer survivors or to commemorate loved ones
who had succumbed. Here in Europe, the
Caelyx molecule receives special funding for its production since ovarian
cancer is classified as a rare disease.
But there are so many people in the States, that even a rare disease
event can produce quite a turnout.
Since I was a “survivor”, I received a special T-shirt and was
invited to sign the 2013 banner. It made
me start thinking: what does that mean to be a “cancer survivor”? Is it someone
that is just still alive but who is actually living on borrowed time or is it
someone who is “cured” ? But aren’t we all just living on borrowed time? I always thought that a survivor is someone
who makes it through some catastrophe and comes out the other side safe and
sound and at least somewhat sane?
According to that definition I don’t feel that I have “survived”
my cancer, since it is a day-to-day part of me, but I do feel that I am a survivor. I survived moving from my idyllic childhood
surroundings of the lush nature of southern Louisiana to the sterile, concrete
city of Houston, and realizing along the way that I was not a Cajun after all but
just a regular WASP. I survived the
disbelief of my father’s untimely death when he was only 52 and I was 14 – “But
this only happens to somebody else!” – and the subsequent move to Jackson,
Mississippi, home of my mother’s people.
I survived adolescence in that apartheid environment moving from an
all-white high school to a previously all-black high school in January 1970, mid-way
through my senior year, when the Federal desegregation act was enforced, and a
6 foot wooden cross was burned in our front yard because my mother chose to
respect the law. I survived the failure
of my first marriage and having my naïve dreams of “just being together would
be enough to be happy” shattered, and then, in the aftermath, trying to rebuild
my life with a useless diploma and part-time responsibility for my two small
children. I survived the aimless years of "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll" which I would have been better off experiencing before rushing into a teen-age marriage at the age of 19 and having my first baby at the age of 21. I survived my mother’s
“suicide by breast cancer” soon after I had humbly asked her to help me go back
to university and having to come to terms with the realisation that I was an
orphan at the age of 28 and had no one to rely on except myself. I survived going back to school in Computer
Sciences, because it was the rational choice for future employment and unfortunately
had nothing whatsoever to do my passionate interests in biology, and even
making it through graduate school – how else could I justify my graduation age
if I didn’t at least have a Master’s? I survived my brother’s suicide several
years later, being deeply affected by the anger of having been betrayed and
abandoned with no one from my nuclear family left, while trying to maintain
some manner of tolerance and respect for his decision. I consider myself a survivor, not of ovarian
cancer, but of life, that no matter what gets thrown in my path, or no matter
how hard I get knocked down, I just keep getting up, brushing myself off, and
trying to do the next best thing.
I’ve also come to realize that having cancer is not a “get
out of jail free” card; it is not some karmic shield that prevents other shit
from happening in my life. I can have
cancer and still get to experience death in the family, loss of loved ones,
breakdown in meaningful relationships, illness, and the inevitability of aging.
The other side of the coin is that I no
longer live in a state of fear because of my cancer. Instead of thinking that ten years would be
pretty good, I’m more inclined to think that ten years is just getting started.
I can see myself attending my
grandchildren’s weddings, seeing them graduating from college, watching them
getting set up in life, maybe even seeing my kids becoming grandparents
themselves.
Now that’s something to look forward to!
