Begin Again

Spring by Ognyan Lazarov

I’ve been staring at a blank page for over 1 year now. For many months my writing stopped altogether, words were drained and lost. For the longest time I felt empty. I felt foolish. I felt really, really dumb.

Here I am in October 2014 starting this blog called “Path after Cancer”, feeling like a conqueror of the world. I wrote the blog entry “Fuck you, Cancer” after having just completed a second breast tissue biopsy (first one was 5 years earlier, thinking it’s all good, it’s all behind me. And then 2 weeks later Cancer shows me the middle finger, when the second diagnose comes. And I land there - in the pause between thoughts, between audible sounds, between hope & despair, thinking: “It outsmarted me and all the efforts to keep it “at bay”... It showed me there is no such thing as conquering or surviving Cancer. You can only say you survived Cancer, if you eventually die of something else. I’m sorry, World, for being so blunt, but let’s stop wrapping it in pink ribbons and sugar-coating it for a minute!”

This was about 18 months ago. I’m still around but I don’t like calling myself a “Survivor”. In my opinion, “graduate” is a more honest label. It describes the immense learning and effort that comes with the disease. “Survivor” demands a guarantee from life, and there is no such thing as a guarantee with cancer (or life in general), because even if 5,/10,/20 years pass, you can never be 100% sure it's not lurking around the corner from the next routine check-up. At least not yet. And I’ve been hiding behind the “I need a guarantee” card for 18 months, telling myself I can’t write about cancer otherwise.

Recognizing that life is uncertain has been a painful and exhilarating revelation at the same time. I’m not nearly done with all my lessons, or even entirely over the fact that cancer is a label that sticks in people’s perceptions and outing yourself with it can have social consequences. The word Cancer is condemning, and more so the younger we are when our bodies are branded with it.

Yet, deep in my heart I feel it’s part of my path to give hope to others. Many friends have been reaching out to me, asking me to share more, to help support their difficult journey or that of their family members, who have been newly diagnosed.

So here it is - my journey, my thoughts, my twisted humour in the utmost indecent moments.

And as a side note:

I won’t offer you advice, recommend this over that. I am not a medical professional, nor do I think that my choices about food, life, work or anything else can be applied as a formula on everyone. We have been created with certain diversity and individuality and it’s these two parts of us that we honour, that make life an adventure.

This blog won’t be dedicated to a sad tale either, even if the facts seems harsh, even if I hardly know anyone listening/reading about cancer without flinching. The content of this blog is coming from an honest place that cancer is helping me reach, in which I’m recognizing that life offers us all shades and we choose which ones to call “good” and “bad”. Denying or hiding the ones we don’t like won’t make them disappear, so why not learn to ride the “highs” and “lows”? After all: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

Whoever you are, and whatever reason brought you here, I hope you will find ideas and methods to help you follow your own path with a calmer heart. I hope you will feel less alone, less foolish, less lost. I hope to make your journey lighter, just like mine was supported by other fighters, who offered me their story in dark days.

Be compassionate with the frequency of my posts, with my typos (which I never seem to escape) and mostly with your fears(they will be with you and that’s OK).

Post comments, if you have questions, I will try to answer as soon as possible.

Yours, K

Fuck you, Cancer!

“The will to live will always outweigh the ability to die”

-------------------------------------------------------------

Vertigo (New Orleans, Sept 2014)

This is my second biopsy. It’s just about 4½ years after the first one. I am almost at the 5th year mark that everyone in the cancer society brags about. I don’t believe in it. It’s a statistical candy you reach out to in low moments. Yet secretly, so have I. I’ve been looking to pass through this threshold so I can stick a middle finger out in the air to the universe and all the bad omens around my initial prognosis. I wonder what the call this new lump situation - a coincidence or a big effen wake-up slap on the face for somehow forgetting all the lessons I painfully learned by nearly losing my life.

I must have checked a thousand times in the past 5 days whether the lump is still where I found it last Thursday - right next to my scar from the first surgery, which removed a 20mm tumor out of my right armpit in June 2010. Yep, still there. It hasn’t magically dissolved into my bloodstream. Firmly nested above my right breast, the lump is staring back at me indifferently or rather I am looking at it muttering: “Fuck you, Cancer!”. I really don’t want to do a sequel of the first horror movie. I’m still not over “all the fun” from the first one, all the surgeries, chemo drugs and radiotherapy treatment. My hair just starting growing out of the 80’s David Bowie hairstyle. But my mind, the notorious producer of dark scenarios, wonders off without consulting the rest of my being. I see myself receiving dreadful news and screaming until all electronic devices in the room burst. I begin making decisions, having conversations with people, choosing procedures…

Meditation, acupuncture, yoga, oh yeah, I recruit all the feng shui I can get. They have all been mobilized to turn this lump into a mere warning rather that a turning point. I roll in needles & zen music, dab ointments, soak in bath salts. They help a tiny bit to put a leash around the beaten horse of my mind and restrain its walks to hell for a moment or two. One good thing of all this - I don’t give a damn about anything that made me angry until last Thursday. It was mostly work stuff that was paying me visits even in my sleep. I would often continue futile conversations from where they were left earlier during the day. I will get angrier at people and situations I can’t change and wake up in the middle of the night from the anxiety. Oh, how a tiny lump can reduce all the big monsters in the daily round to footnotes in the overall realm of life.

Today, in the morning of the biopsy I begin the day with some essential rituals. I feel turning spiritual for the wrong reasons, because I seek help in everything - ginger tea & coconut yogurt for breakfast, a few sun salutations, an episode of a funny sitcom. I dust the tiny vest of a Ganesh puppet, which a dear friend gave to me to symbolically protect me during chemotherapy. I give him a strong squeeze. It’s time to go. I pack the oversized 4-inch wide folder, which contains my entire medical history and head out into the gorgeous October day.

Ironically enough, the hospital is situated on the ground floor of the building I work in. I dread the scenario of meeting colleagues and having to explain where I am headed to. “Hey, how are you?” I never know how seriously to reply to this question. I’m the kind of weirdo that gives a straight forward answer and makes people feel uncomfortable “I am good, I am on my way to make sure that lump I found isn’t cancerous. See ya!”. I keep my head down, clutching the binder as a shield that I can hide behind, if I need to.

Nervous humming and gossip magazines is what the waiting room has to offer. I fainted during the first biopsy and during all 8 blood tests in the week before the surgery. The nauseating feeling comes back, triggered by the overly present fumes of heavy disinfectants. I shift my attention to instructions on yoga breathing. A few years ago these exercises helped me overcome the fear of needles. I’m hoping they will keep my consciousness up and the nasty feeling in my stomach down.

A nurse chops my difficult-to-pronounce name while scanning the patients around. I strip and put on the pink garment I’m offered. The folder is still wrapped in my embrace with all of its air out. Althea is the ultrasound girl on duty. She’s in a pretty good mood, which she’s trying to transmit to me. Good vibes - let ‘em come. I am looking for promises on the results rather than jokes.

Time to get started. Space is a luxury in Manhattan and in this hospital as well. Apart from all the beeping gadgets, there are 4 of us in the tiny room. Althea, the biopsy Doc and a handsome assistant doctor that seems to be there for the show. I don’t mind it. My boobs have performed internationally on multiple occasions since 2010. Dr. Blondie (not her real name, of course), who’s about to puncture the lumpy bastard looks and talks like a cool chick in her early 40’s, whose hobbies could might as well be cross-country motorcycling and outdrinking fat dudes in bars.

“You look like you are twelve, how old were you back then?”

She delivers her punchline with the wit of a plumber who’s about to perform a master pipe change.

“I was 26”

“Jeez, that’s young…”

"No shit", I think to myself. That doesn’t exactly encourage fuzzy feelings within me.

Without much ado, she punches some anesthetic in my right side and begins to dig. I am still trying to process the fact she’s touching me. The dull pulling of meat deep under my skin brings those frightening memories back and they clash immediately with my blood pressure. It begins to drop to the point where I am about to pass out. Luckily, the Doc pulls back on time and I’m able to retain consciousness by kicking legs high in the air and breathing like I am about to give birth to an elephant. She goes out for preliminary testing. The longest 5 minutes of my life begin, or maybe the longest of the past 4 years. Having my med history, superlatives get exhausted fast. I’m thinking about random stuff that has no business in this room, like Einstein and his relativity theory and also the fact that I need to get my nails done. I think about Althea and that I want a coconut cappuccino. I’m trying to recall some quotes from Buddha that I recently read. And then Doc enters with a smug face underpinned greatly by her red lipstick.

“It’s just a fat lump. Nothing to worry about.”

I’ve been crying throughout the entire procedure and I’m clutching to a pile of tissues. I feel something really tight releasing its grip off my ribs and evaporating into the sticky air. 

Holly shit, it was just a warning?! 4½ years and 4 countries later the monsters are back. No, not Cancer - all the meaningless bullshit I get angry at and the vertigo of negative thoughts - those monsters. I do believe they can unleash the worst and allow Cancer to return, so realizing that they are not worth my anger is a gift. And next to my usual “Fuck you, Cancer!”, painfully enough, I mutter the impossible - “Thank you, Cancer”, thank you for making my life more meaningful, my days sunnier, the search within me and beyond the skin I inhibit a happy adventure. Thank you for reminding me, yet again, where that path to a healthy self is.

I stagger down the corridor feeling like I’ve just exited a tequila shot competition, still giving my Thank you Oscar speech in my head. The Doc yells behind me as I take my zombie walk back to the changing room:

“I will see you in 6 months... And in 20 years!“