A Bit of Cancer

And everything in between…

recent posts

about

  • So long, Summer.

    So long, Summer.

    Summer was never my favorite season. I’d live for the cooler nights of fall, the beautiful sparkling snowscapes of winter, and the first happy blooms of spring. Summer was just hot, humid, and long.
    I’d long for those first days of September when the air is a bit more crisp despite the warm temperatures and the first leaves drop bringing a buzz and excitement no other season could. I loved the longer nights huddled in my warm home with the people I love most. Thrilled at the prospect of a first snow and sparkling Christmas lights. And when the novelty fades and the gray becomes too much, the bright greens of spring burst on the horizon to save the day. But the oppressive heat of summer was never anticipated, at least not since I was a child- back when summer brought days of freedom splashing in pools, riding bikes until dusk, and endless adventures you thought would never end.


    Somewhere in the years that have passed that changed. The heat and humidity aren’t quite so oppressive and I float in our little pool on the days they are. Evenings are spent strolling the garden to see what new treats are ready, and days wrap up on globe lit patios with the almost deafening symphony of cicadas buzzing in the trees while fire flies float magically above the green grass. And my children are nearby. Perhaps running through the yard with a deflated football, a border collie hot on their trail. Maybe in the chair next to me, asking questions or talking about the day and plans for tomorrow. Or sometimes tucked into their rooms on a call or game with friends.


    I am confident I can pin the change in seasonal perspective to a single event: School. My babies became toddlers who turned into school children (and now teenagers and young adults) and suddenly our life was governed by bells and school calendars, bus routes and attendance policies. And with that summer returned to the freedom and magic of my own childhood long since gone. For a few short months responsibilities feel less heavy, obligations less strict, and the freedom almost endless. Late nights by campfires, sleeping in, jumps off boulders into mountain streams and waterfalls, running leaps from piers into cool Great Lakes. Casual dinners, walks among the cicada symphony just me and my boys and our dogs. Swings at the park, monkey bars, splashing in pools. Pure, simplistic magic.


    Somewhere in those years, in the living of life, summer became my favorite. Not because the weather, but because the people in it. Autumn blends to Halloween, pumpkins get covered in snow and the magic of Christmas, the cold of winter breaks to the vibrancy of spring, and summer brings my kids fully home again. It is now the season I find myself mourning at its completion in nostalgic smiles.


    Today was back to school for my youngest. A few years ago our district moved the start time back a few weeks – a most unwelcome change. Lazy mornings now have 6:30am bus times. Casual dinners replaced by rushed quick bites while jumping into cars to practices. The season remains, the heat and humidity still linger, the calendar still declares summer to be… but the magic has quieted and the carefree days have been traded for rushed mornings and busy evenings as a new routine settles in.


    My son is a Junior now. Next year is our last premature end to our summer bliss – like his brother he’ll be in college but with a more reasonable return time the year after. And we’ll have several more weeks to splash in lakes and sit by campfires and have casual dinners and evening walks I excitedly anticipate.


    A few days ago as our big summer trip was ending and we were being tossed in large Lake Michigan waves and making running leaps from large piers, I reveled in the thought that soon our summers would have more nights. More nights means more magic, because the truth is time is magic. And that’s what we all really want, more time.


    But time is a thief as much as it is a generous curator. A double edged sword. And it occurred to me: With that extra time will also come the race toward college and careers and homes of their own. And I cannot wait to see them experience those things – a true privilege I pray I am afforded. But it made me wonder, when all the time is there and the constraints of school schedules removed, will summer still hold the same magic when they are not here?


    I suspect not. The magic is not the weather or the length of light. It is them. The laughter, the adventures, the noise. But while the magic won’t be the same, I don’t expect it will be gone. The cicadas will still sing, the house will have the smell of summer and cool air conditioned floors, the garden will produce, and the globe lights of the patio and humming of the pool filter will remind me of all these nights by campfires and hunting underwater gems while dogs chase after laughing boys with deflated footballs. I know the summers of now will always be my favorite and I will miss them, but how beautiful and lucky will it be to carry those memories into all the summers to come. And I believe summer will still bring my children home, even if just for a little while.

    For now though we’ll steal what we can from what summer has left. We’ll transition into cool nights and stadium seats and ice cream runs. And we’ll find adventures everywhere we can in between the rush.

  • A Rededication to Things Left Unsaid

    When I decided to start writing my intention was simple, even if followed by a morbid shadow: provide a place to release the various conversations tumbling around my mind in hushed whispers and silent screams. And in the event this all doesn’t work out the way statistics say it should, then these entries might provide a legacy of sorts for the few I love most. 

    Instead I quickly lost sight of that goal. I found myself asking what people might want to read – What purpose can I provide? Insight, wisdom, advocacy… Does this sound like AI? I’ve always used those little dashes. Is this too morbid, dramatic, negative? Am I feeding into the same tripe and tropes I turn away from? And so I paused, confining those words back to their deafening silence locked in my head.

    I’ve learned a lot since my diagnosis two years ago. Statistics, survival, treatments, surgeries, things I wish never had any relevance to my life. Ignorance was bliss. But the one thing I’ve unexpectedly learned and screams the loudest is just how incredibly isolating and lonely a cancer diagnosis is. Any serious illness really, but cancer hit in a particularly harsh way.

    Popular belief lends itself to images of togetherness, T-shirts, teams, inspiration, warriors and battles and fights. And that does exist – upon my diagnosis people reached out, my living room filled with flowers, my phone alerted and lit up more than ever. But just as quickly the noise quiets down, the phone calls fade, and the flowers die. Well, all except the thoughtfully arranged basket of plants that came from my aunt and cousins – multiple repottings later they still thrive on various windowsills – including a beautiful prayer plant I have irrationally (and unhealthily) tied my cancer survival to. Consider this foreshadowing to the strange ways my mind works.

    People fall away. Friends leave. No one prepares you for that part, but it is not uncommon. I don’t blame them. If I could walk away from this I would too.

    But people stay. Sometimes the people you least expect. And that is beautiful. They are beautiful. They try so hard, and you appreciate so much, always grateful… but the reality remains that a cancer diagnosis is more than difficult to comprehend unless you’ve experienced it. And there is only so much most people can handle – no one prepares you for how much of your diagnosis will be spent protecting others from it.

    There are support groups – and for some I am sure they are great. I, however, have never quite felt well understood. My cancer pisses me off more than it makes me inspirational. I choke on perfectly positive platitudes. And the comparative suffering – at least you’re not this, I’m that, you’re old, I’m young, be grateful you’re not me… serves no one. Cancer sucks. It is a thief that robs us all – some it takes more than others… but it is relentlessly cruel to all it touches.

    And thus you – assuming you’re like me – are left with thoughts tumbling around your head, countless conversations spoken silently in your mind, and a smile on your face in a crowded room.

    So consider this a rededication to my original purpose. Made on this day, my toes in the sand, the sprawling waters of Lake Michigan spread before me. Two-year scans are two weeks away, which means I am chasing God in water and awe-inspiring places (complete with a bird just shitting on me. Thanks for keeping me grounded before I went off on the inspirational cancer trail, little buddy. And an especially big thanks for aiming for my foot when so many other opportunities were present).

    I don’t expect this little writing corner of mine will ever become a best seller – if you’re looking for heroic prose you’re unlikely to find it here – while I have my moments, it’s been two years and I’m still pretty angry about this whole thing. But I live and love every day in spite of that anger. I have grand plans for my future and some pretty spectacular adventures planned – and that’s more optimistic than any motivational poster or regurgitated tagline could ever be. And I see some pretty cool stuff along the way, should whatever random soul reading this decide to stick around.

    So tumble out, crazy incoherent thoughts… here I set thee free. Perhaps they shall resonate with another, or provide comfort to my boys if all goes to hell (they are already aware I’m nuts). And if nothing else, at least they will have been said.

  • A Life Left Behind

    I was angry when they told me I had cancer. It wasn’t the emotion I would have expected upon receiving that diagnosis, but then little about the past year could be considered such. I wish I could say that my anger had a rational target, but I was just mad — How dare they say such a thing to me? Surely it couldn’t be true. I was there for a complication from an ankle reconstruction, not a six-centimeter tumor in my kidney. I have lupus; we’ve closely monitored my kidneys and bloodwork every few months for years. How could I have cancer exactly where we’d been looking all this time? That felt particularly cruel — watching my kidneys for so long against one threat, only to have cancer slip in through the back door and take one.

    Over the next few hours locked in that tiny emergency-room cell (quite literally — the hospital was swamped that night and they were using psych hold rooms as overflow), I seemed to move through the stereotypical stages of grief at a rapid pace. I bargained and pleaded with the people moving about the room. I explained I was only forty-one and had two kids still in school. I spoke my children’s names as if they might elicit sympathy from the powers that be to change things. I repeated their names as if they could finally convince the medical team to magically fix this and let me go home — back to my boys, back to my old life. I blamed myself. I called my mother. I cried. And in the end, I accepted the moment with one caveat: if I had to have cancer and had to be admitted, then at least give me something good to knock me out.

    Unbeknownst to me, I would return to that grief — that personal, awful hell — many more times in the months that followed. I suspect I will always grieve the life I left behind that night. As time passes, it comes and goes with proverbial, unpredictable tides. Sometimes it settles quietly just offshore — long enough to almost, but never fully, believe that one day it could pass.

    That night was over a year ago now. Today I find myself sitting at the edge of a forest on a cool October evening, listening to two barred owls duet by the glow of a campfire — in what most would call remission — one kidney lighter than before. For the medically minded, I am Stage I T1b clear cell renal cell carcinoma, Grade 3: fifteen months No Evidence of Disease (NED) following a radical right nephrectomy, complicated by lupus and lifelong anticoagulation for antiphospholipid syndrome.

    But as those of you who have walked this road know, I am still in the unknown — balancing fear and grace, learning how to move forward on a path I no longer recognize. While I physically sit on the edge of the woods as I write, mentally I still find myself in them, waiting to see if the treatment worked — if we truly did find the cancer in time. It’s a story only time can tell, unfolding in radiology reports and medical acronyms every six months.

    Being diagnosed with cancer made me realize just how little I knew about it — and just how much media, particularly social media, gets it wrong. I’ve struggled not with the absence of inspiration or positivity in “my journey,” but with the expectation that I should find them there. I’ve felt like a failure because I don’t feel brave or strong, and I definitely don’t feel like I’ve “got this.” I’m terrible at support groups, and I’ve faced depression and anxiety — I still sit with them from time to time.

    Cancer — contrary to my previous belief — has been one of the loneliest experiences of my life. Learning that it’s okay to grieve what I lost differently, to process this trauma in reality and fact, to be scared, and to contemplate and make peace with my own mortality has been the necessary catalyst for rebuilding a beautiful, full life — one filled with new adventures, hesitant hopes, and fragile dreams. One that I’m grateful for every day.

    Somewhere between a lump, a feeling, a scan, and a diagnosis, your life takes a new path. Regardless of outcome, you are not the same person you once were, and a new life — a second life — begins. It’s hard, stepping away from what was and coming to terms with what is. It’s hard rebuilding while knowing how it feels to have the floor drop out from under you — knowing you’re always one scan away from it all happening again. But stepping forward alongside that fear is its own kind of strength. I suppose I hope turning to an old friend — words on a page — will help me find mine.

    After they placed the IVs and filled out the paperwork that night months ago I was brought up to my room. My mom settled on the couch below the large, dark windows to sleep. A kind nurse sat with me for a moment, and the meds I’d negotiated earlier — per the terms of “acceptance” — were administered. It was the end of April and a spring storm rumbled and flashed outside in the early morning hours. I lay in the bed, staring into the dark, listening to the wind and rain, thinking about how much I would have enjoyed those sounds if I were home — if none of this were happening. The rain and thunder rumbled on for hours as I sat and missed what should have been. The next night they gave me something stronger, but I still didn’t sleep.