Ten Years!

Ten years ago today was a big day. The day before my best friend's wedding. There was a bridal luncheon to enjoy, reception to set up for, and rehearsal dinner to attend. There were friends from out of town coming back. And there was also that CT scan to check out the back pain I'd been having. 

No big deal; I'd fit that in just before the bridal luncheon. I may have been the first they'd seen show up to a CT scan in a party dress. I hope it made them smile. CT scans are quick and easy, and I was glad to check it off my personal to-do list so I could switch back to full-on maid-of-honor mode. We enjoyed a beautiful luncheon together, but by the time I got back to my car, I had a missed call from my doctor. And a new appointment notice. 

I felt sick. This didn't seem like what would be happening if everything was fine. What had the scan revealed? Too full of dread to call my doctor back, I opened the radiologist's report. Words like "osseous metastasis," "pathologic fracture," and "significant findings" made the pit in my stomach sink even lower. Hoping to find out this wasn't as horrible as it sounded, I googled the terms. "Incurable" and "terminal" were what it spit back at me.

Feeling strangely fortified now that I knew what my doctor was going to tell me, I returned his call, bracing to hear the words spoken out loud for the first time: "Your cancer is back, and it's in your spine." I was going to have to call my husband and tell him I was going to die. Three years is what Dr. Google suggested I might have left. I wouldn't even live to see my 40th birthday. I cried in my car at the prospect.

But then it was back to maid-of-honor mode. Off to set up for the reception. Hoping the others working with me wouldn't notice my smeared mascara or the tears still welling up in my eyes. Nobody could know today. 

But still, I needed to tell someone else besides my husband. Someone who could join me in my grief and not just feel like they had to be strong for me. Someone not part of the wedding. I called my sister. 

It turns out telling people you're going to die is almost harder than hearing the news yourself. But at least I wasn't alone with this horrible knowledge. I could make it through the rest of the day with the support of these two.

That was ten years ago. Obviously, I eventually broke the news to my best friend and to everyone else. And obviously Dr. Google's three-year prognosis was wrong. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know that any of the 1,095 days that made up those three years. I didn't know that any of the 2,555 days that have comprised the seven years after that.

Sometimes, to encourage you, people tell you that no one really knows what day could be their last. Anyone could get hit by a bus today and lose their life. And while that's true, living your life knowing you're going to be hit by a bus is a lot different. It's much like what fellow patient Kim Drew Wright wrote in this post:

You are at the hairdresser which you realize you should be grateful for since you have already lost your hair twice and will likely lose it again soon. Although, even this is not accurate as “lost” implies you have been careless with your hair and simply misplaced it. This is only the second time he has cut your hair and when he says, “You seem sadder, today,” you tell him what you swore you weren’t going to tell him as you parked in front of the shop next door that advertises MASSAGE in bold red letters. 

“I just got my MRI results back and they weren’t what I hoped for,” you reply, like the news is a poorly fitting sweater your grandmother knitted you for Christmas instead of disease progression on an oral chemotherapy you hoped would buy you years instead of just this past summer which is, now, turning into fall. 

He tries to comfort you with the cliched, “Well, anyone could die at any moment. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.” For once, you are honest, since you have heard this ad nauseam for 5 years now and have thought for more than 5 seconds about what the words actually mean, which is not comparable to actively dying of stage four cancer. 

You say, “That’s a bad analogy.”

The hairdresser pauses mid-brushstroke with the scissors beside your temple. “How so?”

“It’s not the same thing. Are you obsessed with getting hit by a bus? Sure anyone could die at any moment, but a more fitting analogy would be if you were standing in the road and saw the bus coming for like four years and still couldn’t get out of the way. Your friends and family can see the bus coming from where they are standing on the sidewalk. There is frantic waving to the driver, brainstorming with engineers, and seeking out top notch mechanics while the bus is bearing down on you, but even though you spend your life’s savings and dig a trench of debt around yourself, none of them know how to either steer the bus away or make it stop. You can not dive into the clear. Instead, while you wait for the bus to run you over, they decide the best course of action is to whittle you down smaller, so they slice pieces of you for the vultures, shoot lasers into your chest, and give you poison which makes you lose your lunch, hair, and ages you, because, by god, if you can’t have the years you can at least have the wear and tear, and maybe one of these things will unglue you from the pavement, while passersby imply that if you ate more salads or prayed harder you’d be on the sidewalk with them instead of getting plowed over or offer advice like, “Always be grateful,” because they haven’t learned, yet, that you can be both grateful and scared sh*tless at the same time.

You try to ignore these folks because you are busy explaining to your children and husband and friends, who are not stuck in the road watching the bus but stuck on the sidewalk watching you watch the bus, how horribly sorry you are that you are going to get hit by the bus, until everyone gets tired of waving and asking why you can’t join them so you can all continue on together to the other places you would rather be, but no matter how much you try to flag down the driver for mercy or research “how to stop a bus” you realize that nobody has the answers because this bus is, ironically, out of control while being a hundred percent in control and for whatever reason the engineers and driver of this particular bus can’t figure out how to stop or redirect it from its route directly into you. Although you often feel alone, on closer inspection, you notice the road behind the bus is paved with trampled female bodies and the ones who are falling just in front of the bumper are screaming for you to run.”

For now, your hairdresser takes another snip. “I guess I’ve never thought about it like that.”

I have lots more thoughts on my ten-year cancerversary, but I'll leave you with these for now.