Monthly Archives: November 2011

“This Is What It Means to Be Alive:” Feeling Thankful after Cancer

“This Is What It Means to Be Alive:” Feeling Thankful after Cancer

Thanksgiving is an easy holiday for cancer survivors: we have gratitude coming out of our ears. We don’t need Pilgrim hats and Wampanoag feathers to remind us how fortunate we are. Our encounter with cancer made it clear we are lucky to be alive. We feel grateful every day.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have our share of bitter resentment as well. Young survivors are painfully aware of how much we have lost to cancer—breasts, testicles, colons, fertility, friends, the youthful confidence that everything will work out alright. These are hard pills to swallow, especially when you are in your twenties or thirties and your disease-free friends don’t understand.

Yet alongside the grief and loss, we can’t help but feel thankful.

In the immediate aftermath of treatment, we appreciate even the most ordinary moments. Denny was 28 when he got diagnosed with nasal cancer. His 35 doses of radiation, brutal rounds of chemo, and extensive mouth sores made it impossible for him to eat, so his doctors attached a g-tube to his abdomen. He said:

When I took my first shower after I got the appendages taken out, I cried for 20 minutes. I am a shower guy. When I was ill for nine months, it was squatting in the tub. When I take a shower, I feel liberated. I am reminded it is a luxury. Washing my hair is one of the most joyous things I do, because it is a luxury to have hair.

After you have been bald and vomiting and fearing death for months, you become remarkably easy to please. But there is wisdom in savoring simple pleasures.

Over coffee one day, a fellow breast cancer survivor told me, “I was walking up the stairs from the subway the other day, and this breeze started blowing, and it blew my shirt against my skin in this way that made me stop and think, ‘This is what it means to be alive.’”

I’ve often had those realizations since my diagnosis. Sometimes when I am floating on my back in the ocean or resting against a redrock canyon wall, I am struck by how lucky I am to be living through such moments. I have seen the alternative. I know I could just as easily be in a chemo chair, fighting off an infection in a hospital bed, or facing death. But instead I get to feel the sun on my face and hear my family’s laughter.

The list of things to be thankful for is long. I am grateful that my cancer did not recur, that my husband was an incredible support during our ordeal, that I was able to have my daughter even after chemo. I have many gifts in my life, and I appreciate each one of them. But there is something about the simple moments and the small luxuries that bring the gratitude home.

At dinner tables across the nation this week, people will raise their glasses and say they are thankful for their health. I am sure they will mean it, but we cancer survivors know its true value. And we know that sitting through another Thanksgiving meal is reward in itself.

Cancer survivors know life can be stolen away at any moment. We have earned our gratitude. We may as well enjoy it.

One survivor of testicular cancer explained, “Since my diagnosis, I am able to put things in perspective. If I have a bad day at work, my kid is screaming, my house is a disaster. Well you know, fuck it! I am alive! I appreciate the time I have.”

Emily Cousins

Emily Cousins is a writer and editor who was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 32 and nine-months pregnant with her first child. She is currently writing a book about what it’s like for young survivors once cancer treatment is over-when the radiation burns have healed and the hair has started to come back, but everything else is completely out of whack. After almost a decade living in New York City, Cousins now resides in Northern Arizona with her husband, son, and the daughter she was lucky to have post chemo.

Reaction to "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry

Reaction to "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry

This post was original featured on Shelley’s personal blog “Life’s a Beach.”

Last night at the CMA Awards, The Band Perry won Best Single of the Year for the song, “If I die Young.”

The song was released in the Mainstream Top 40 in May, a little over a week after I arrived home from my 40-day hospital stay. Somehow, despite its triple platinum success, I didn’t hear it for the first time until this fall. It came on the radio as I was driving home from an appointment with my oncologist. I sobbed as I listened to the words:

If I die young, bury me in satin
Lay me down on a bed of roses
Sink me in the river at dawn
Send me away with the words of a love song

In an interview with The Boots, lead vocalist Kimberly Perry said, “We wanted to write a song about making the most of whatever time you’re given — whether it’s two years, twenty years or two hundred. We really have gotten to live and love at our young ages. ‘If I Die Young,’ for us, is about if it all ends at this moment, look at what we’ve gotten to do. Whatever time we’re given will be absolutely enough as long as we make the most of it.”

Apparently, the vast majority of people view the song as romantic and positive. When coupled with the commentary about her purpose for writing it, I agree. Based on the lyrics alone, however, I don’t find the song romantic at all. From my particular vantage point, as a cancer fighter, its sounds a lot like giving up.

There’s nothing charming or glorious about dying young. Cancer patients and others afflicted with serious diseases endure great physical and emotional pain to avoid “The sharp knife of a short life.” We don’t want to be buried in satin or put to rest on a bed of roses. We want to live to 90.

I am not a quitter, nor is any cancer patient I’ve had the pleasure of knowing this year. On an office door outside my high school swimming pool, there was a sketch of a crane and a frog. In it the crane has the frog in its mouth, but the frog is choking the crane to prevent the crane from swallowing him. The caption above it reads, “Never Give Up!” That depiction of a fighter fills me with more hope than the CMA’s Song of the Year.

I can understand how Kimberly Perry, as a healthy young woman, was able to think of death in terms of metaphors that use rainbows and pearls. And I agree with her intended message, that life should be lived to the fullest. But personally, I’d rather picture myself as the frog, refusing to be swallowed, than as someone buried in silk, who believed she had “just enough time.”

Shelley Nolden

Shelley Nolden is a mother, a wife, a financial analyst, and a writer. In March 2011, an obstetrician informed her husband and her that their five-month-old unborn baby girl had no heartbeat. A week later, Shelley was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), subtype 3 (APL). Shelley is currently in remission and receiving treatments to maintain that status. Like the rest of the Cancer Club, Shelley is trying to adjust to her new reality while keeping a positive mindset. Read more at www.shelleynolden.blogspot.com.

Cancer Frenemies: When Good Friends Say Bad Things

Cancer Frenemies: When Good Friends Say Bad Things

Cancer can bring out the stupid in people. Complete strangers and well-meaning acquaintances blurt out the most insensitive things right to survivors’ faces.

Nita, who had a double mastectomy after she got breast cancer in her late twenties, was told by a coworker, “I don’t know why you are so hung up on breasts. Look at me; mine are small.” Another survivor I know went to a new dentist, and when the dentist learned from Haley’s intake form that she had cervical cancer, he asked her, “How many sexual partners did you have?”

Inappropriate remarks are painful enough when they come from people we barely know, but when they come from friends, they hurt even more.

One of my friends said she kept imagining my funeral. Another told me I had likely caused my breast cancer by being stressed out. Another said it probably wouldn’t damage my baby too much if gave him formula instead of breast milk during chemo, but then again maybe it would.

I know each one of these women cared about me. I know they wanted me to get better. I know they said these things out of a combination of anxiety, ignorance, and inexperience.

And that was part of the problem. When you get cancer in your twenties and thirties, most of your friends have no idea what the heck to say to you. They could counsel you through break ups and baby troubles, but cancer just isn’t on their radar screens yet.

When Elan was 27 years old, he learned he had a malignant tumor the size of a football lodged between his sacrum and hip bone. He underwent massive surgery and slogged through years of physical therapy in order to progress from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane to a limp. “When this happens to you at a younger age, you friends don’t know how to react. It’s not the norm to get sick. At an older age, people are seasoned, and their friends are seasoned. But mine just didn’t have the experience.”

Survivors learn to disregard clueless comments if we know the person means well. It’s the absent friends who are harder to understand. Most of my friends helped me in practical and emotional ways that truly helped me, but some just couldn’t do it. I told one family friend I had cancer right after I got diagnosed. I didn’t see him again for nine months, and frankly, by then I barely wanted to.

Most survivors have a similar story. One woman I know had just finished graduate school in Atlanta when she got diagnosed with Hodgkin’s at 28. Her family gave her tons of support, but, she told me, “I learned the true character of someone I thought was one of my best friends. I didn’t know that in a crisis someone I loved would leave and not weather the storm.”

I once asked a group of young survivors if they held grudges against friends like that.

“It isn’t a grudge,” someone answered. “It’s clarity.”

People provide you with clues about how much they can cope with, what kind of information they can handle, when you can count on them. We aren’t being unforgiving when we remember this. We are being sensible.

And we are protecting our feelings. If you feel frightened after leaving the oncologist’s office, you don’t call a friend who will get so nervous talking about death that she’ll start complaining about her annoying roommate. Instead, you call someone who has proven she can listen, respect your fears, and ease your mind.

The comforting friend may not be the one you expected. Nearly every survivor I have spoken to said they were wonderfully surprised by people who rose to the occasion in unanticipated ways.

Kathleen, a fellow breast cancer survivor, told me, “The friends I thought would support me didn’t, but then people came out of the woodwork and turned into my greatest champions.” When Dan got testicular cancer, a buddy he hadn’t seen in awhile flew into town. “He sat through the first two days of chemo. That meant a lot to me. We went to this horrible infusion center, and he livened it up.”

Survivors may have an elephant’s memory for the callous, insensitive comments people make, but we also recall with great appreciation the compassionate, generous, and loving acts of those friends who showed up and helped us through.

Emily Cousins

Emily Cousins is a writer and editor who was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 32 and nine-months pregnant with her first child. She is currently writing a book about what it’s like for young survivors once cancer treatment is over-when the radiation burns have healed and the hair has started to come back, but everything else is completely out of whack. After almost a decade living in New York City, Cousins now resides in Northern Arizona with her husband, son, and the daughter she was lucky to have post chemo.

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