a complicated miracle: parents at last

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Emily

Yesterday, a young woman reached out to me on this neglected blog, and shared a glimpse of her own cancer journey.  She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last fall at age 25, and is currently battling the post-treatment demons that those of us who have endured surgery, chemo and radiation know only too well.  Her words hit me hard, fairly knocking me right out of the blissed-out delirium that has engulfed me since our son, Earl, came into our lives three weeks ago.

Yes: our son.  Our long, tumultuous path to parenthood has finally led us to our child.  We are ecstatic.  But as with most things since cancer, our joy has a unique flavor.

As I read this young woman’s words, I was suddenly no longer a euphoric new parent, holding my beautiful child, singing to him and kissing him all day long.  Instead, I was back in the hospital, plugged in and drugged out, terrified.  I was alone and heartbroken, lost in the daze of my own trauma, months and months after I was declared cancer-free.  With a few words from a stranger, it all came flooding back.

That’s when I knew it was time to start writing about being a parent whose child came to her through adoption and cancer – a mysterious one-two punch that makes me feel like I’m coloring outside the lines of these two distinct communities that I now claim.

It’s been three weeks since I became a mother.  I’m home all day; Earl is asleep most of the time; perfect conditions for writing and reflecting.  But I’ve been stuck.

On what?

I’ve been writing for years about the trials of Life After Cancer, and more recently, about our path to parenthood.  The waiting, the uncertainty, the residual resentment at my wretched disease for making us go through this invasive, unfair process – waiting for some anonymous human being to select us to raise her child.  All the while, I’ve been surrounded by pregnant friends and coworkers.  It’s enough to drive anyone mad.  What perfect fodder, really, for a writer.

So what’s a cancer blogger to do when her dream finally comes true?  The call comes; the chaos begins.  Our baby is coming!  At last!

I could write about the moment when Mike and I first met Earl, two hours after he was born.  I could describe how we walked into the nursery, led by the kind-hearted head nurse, who instinctively folded me in her arms when I began sobbing hysterically as I looked down at his perfect, squirming little body.  I could tell you how the room spun – not unlike the way it did when I first met with my oncologist and she told me about the disease ravaging my reproductive organs.  I could try to explain how for days it felt like my body wouldn’t stop shaking, how every time I gazed at Earl’s perfectly gorgeous face, the tears would spontaneously flow.

But what would that do?  Everyone knows about “the miracle of birth;” every new parent could tell stories about the first time they saw their child, how in love and overwhelmed they felt from that very first moment.

But this feels different, like something more complicated.  Cancer makes our miracle different.

We’ve spent the past year with our adoption agency in a cohort of other young couples, most who have struggled with infertility.  Other than a few same-sex couples, infertility has been the underlying theme motivating these hopeful parents through the adoption process.  While it’s true that I too am infertile, it’s cancer that made me that way.  It’s because of cancer’s affront to my body that I am now Earl’s mother.

Please don’t mistake me for a cancer Pollyanna:  oh, it’s been such a blessing!  My life has changed so much for the better!  I wouldn’t trade my cancer experience for anything!   I am not that person.

What I am is an adoptive parent whose journey to parenthood has been profoundly shaped by the disease that almost killed me.  For that reason, I never want to lose sight of the nightmare that preceded this dream come true.

 

Posted in adoption, fellow fighters, Infertility, Life After Cancer, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

four years: a parade of awe

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Emily

Something is changing.  Perhaps it is simply that the passage of time breeds perspective.  But something must be owed to hard work and hopefulness, and the steadfastness of friends and family. 

This past Tuesday marked four years since the beginning of the week that started my cancer journey.  These are dates that will be forever burned in my brain.  This year, though, is the first year that this week completely snuck up on me, not even giving me pause.  This feels significant.

On Wednesday, as Mike and I walked off the train, it suddenly hit me:  “Hey,” I said to him.  “Yesterday was my MRI-iversary. What do you know about that?”  I had been to yoga Wednesday morning, and was feeling energized and happy.  As the significance of the date occurred to me, there was no quickening of my heart rate, no sinking feeling in my gut, no wave of anxiety washing over me.  Just a matter-of-fact recognition of the events as they had occurred, four years ago.

Yesterday, the sense of serenity persisted.   I was out of bed just after 5 AM, brewing coffee, hanging out with my dog, enjoying my Twitter feed.  I watched Bono’s appearance on The Daily Show from the previous night.  I was warm and happy inside my house, feeling snug and secure against the darkness outside.  But I felt the life force coursing within me, making me antsy.  I decided to go for a run.  So on a chilly December 1st morning, I logged 4-plus miles as I watched the sunrise; there are few things more beautiful.

After running, enjoying my endorphin rush, I faced unexpected obstacles as I attempted to get dressed.  I first donned a pair of pants purchased soon after treatment, which now sagged around my waist.  Feeling absurd, not wanting to spend the day hiking my pants up, I pulled them off.  I tried another pair with a mysterious, faint grease stain on the leg, that also suddenly felt weird in all the wrong places.  A third pair, recently purchased and washed, fell oddly around my deformed mid-section in a way they hadn’t before.  I laughed and sighed as the clothes piled up on my bed.  I offered a running commentary to my bewildered basset hound, who watched in confusion.  I felt not so much a deformed, menopausal-before-my-time victim of cancer, but more of a fussy school kid who suddenly hates all of her clothes. 

 A few years ago, this same scene would have triggered so much anxiety, perhaps even driven me to tears.  For what seemed an eternity, I was so furious and despondent about what cancer had done to my body, inside and out.  Not only was I robbed of a chance to give birth to a child, but my weight fluctuated wildly, taking me from emaciated to beefy, seemingly in the blink of an eye.  I felt like a stranger in my own skin.

Thank Whomever for the reclamation that I’ve managed in the intervening years.  Thank the Universe for the miles run, for the downward dogs and the first-ever headstand, the gateway to a reviving yoga practice.  Thank you for the glorious bike rides.  My body is my own again, and not just because I’ve shed some of the unwanted extra pounds.  But because of my strength, my resilience, my love of doing this living thing.

Mr. Potato Head knows what’s up

But the unexpected wonder didn’t stop with the comedy of fashion errors.  Yesterday I also managed to shake of the long-standing Scrooge-like attitude I’ve always had toward our office holiday party.  In years past, I’d eschew the whole affair, feeling over-whelmed by the excess of food, averse to the forced small talk, disdainful of the mandatory cheer. This year, though, perhaps because of the influence of my boisterous and fun-loving new officemate, I decided to try on a bit of holiday spirit.  I even served as her vocal coach as she worked on her lines for a workplace-specific version of “The 12 Days of Christmas.”  (Happy to say, she brought the house down.) “Who is this person?” I asked myself. “And what has she done with Emily?”

In the midst of the merriment, I even spent some time holding and cuddling another co-worker’s one-year-old.  And instead of feeling empty inside, instead of wondering, “Where is MY baby?  When will it be MY turn?”  I laughed and smiled as I patted Patrick’s huge belly.  I tickled his nose and held his little hands, and I just thought to myself, how amazing, this little person.  And how wonderful it will be when I have the chance to hold my own.

The day, filled with hope and light and laughter, ended so perfectly, when I walked out of work on the heels of my beautiful friend who is days away from delivering her own child.  We stood outside in the cooling evening air, waiting for her man to round the corner.  I told her, with love in my heart, how I think about her every evening when I get home. (“Is she OK?  Is it happening now?? AAHHH!”) Her man arrived, and I shared my shpilkes with him, too, and gave him a big hug, knowing that the next time I see him, he’ll be a Dad for real. 

I hugged my friend, too, and as her huge belly pressed against me, I felt the wonder of our friendship mix with the miracle of creation.  These people I love are about to embark on this incredible adventure, and I just felt myself bursting with excitement and happiness for them, and so blessed to be a part of their world, and to have a chance to share in the love.  It felt momentous to be able to separate my own journey to parenthood from theirs, and fully appreciate the magic of what is happening for them.  How powerful to realize, “It’s not about me.”

I can’t even begin to explain why yesterday turned into this ceaseless parade of awe.  I can’t account for how I have reached this place of peace. It’s been hard work, all these years, but today, I felt the pay-off so acutely.  Tomorrow, on the date when I first met with my oncologist and scheduled my surgery, I will gather with my dearest friends, the same people who surrounded me during that surreal weekend four years ago, after my tumor was found but before my cancer was confirmed.  We will drink and laugh as we always do, but I will be sure to raise a glass to them and say thank you. Without what they – and all my friends and family – have given me these past four years, life would not be the delicious mystery which it has become.

Posted in adoption, Life After Cancer, running, yoga | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

early thanksgiving

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Emily

My original thought last evening, after rocking out insanely for 13.1 miles, was to simply offer a post of thanks for all of the incredible artists – some of whom I’ve loved for my whole life, some of whom are new to me in recent weeks and months – who propelled me through my second half marathon of 2011.  And I still want to do that, because honestly, the music that coursed through me as I pounded the streets of Philadelphia yesterday was a huge part of getting to the finish line with a smile on my face.  Music has always fed my soul, and for helping me conquer the Philadelphia Half-Marathon, I do need to sincerely thank these amazing musicians:

The Decemberists; Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Florence + The Machine; The Sounds; U2; Madonna; Funkadelic; Eurythmics; Pink; Nancy Ajram; Garbage; Pure Reason Revolution; Black Eyed Peas; Annie Lennox; Crowded House; Kaki King; Oasis; Zap Mama; Adele; AC/DC; Luscious Jackson; Flaming Lips; David Bowie; Talk Talk.

Florence Welch

Special recognition must go to Florence + The Machine, who, like other wonderful things and people of late, came across my radar through the magic of social media.  My husband’s Twitter friend and musical soul mate in The Netherlands recently introduced Mike to this astounding music, and Mike then quickly passed it on to me.  From the moment I first heard “Lover to Lover,” just a few short weeks ago, I have been mesmerized.  I came across a quote from Florence Welch, the main creative force in the act, and when I read these words, it all made sense: “I want my music to sound like throwing yourself out of a tree, or off a tall building, or as if you’re being sucked down into the ocean and you can’t breathe.”

If you haven’t checked out Florence + The Machine, do yourself a favor.  Do it now.

So, the gift of music continues.  I thank the Universe for it every day.

But it is the season, and as we approach the holidays still waiting for the child we want so desperately to love, it seems right to take stock.  It’s all too easy to focus on what’s missing, the family that has yet to be completed, the pain of our wait.  But in my clearest moments, I ask myself: why?

Why cry for won’t I don’t have? Why not celebrate what I do?  It helps no one to view life as an empty vessel, begging to be filled.  In fact, it is already over-flowing with beautiful things.

Yesterday’s 13.1 miles were gorgeous, perfect.   My feet beat a path through a huge swath of the city I love most dearly.  There was pain.  Near the zoo, I almost crapped my pants.  I cursed my feet; more specifically, I cursed what chemo did to them.

I also high-fived the Eagles’ mascot on Arch Street, and a giant chocolate chip pancake at Broad and Chestnut.  People lining the route read my name on my bib and cheered for me.  There was life everywhere.  Mike and I crossed the finish line hand-in-hand.

Next up, 26.2

It could not have been more magical.  And as soon as it was over, I vowed to run the entire 26.2 mile course next year.

Two runners died at the finish line yesterday – young men, gone in a flash after pushing themselves to their limit.  We must never forget how quickly this can all end, for any of us.

California cuties

So I give ecstatic thanks.  For four mind-bending years since cancer upended my life.  For my superb husband, who buoys and supports me through absolutely everything, good and bad.  For my beautiful niece and nephew from California, who lit up our home for a few precious days earlier this month.  For the kind and generous couple from our adoption cohort who have just welcomed a baby boy, and have shown such compassion and concern for our continuing wait.  For my ridiculous basset hound.  For the friends out there, everywhere, like stars in the night sky, always shining their light.

I love all of it, every day.

Posted in adoption, Life After Cancer, music, Philadelphia, running | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

the tampon incident (or, taking back my cancer)

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Emily

A strange and unexpected thing happened the other day:  I made a conscious decision to share my cancer story with someone who had no idea I was ever ill.

Four years ago, my cancer came seemingly out of the clear blue sky.  Ultrasound, MRI, surgery – all in the space of a week.  I vanished from work without warning, and didn’t return until seven months later.  No time to create a cover story, even if I wanted to.  I’ll never know exactly how much information was “leaked” to my colleagues at the outset of my illness. But certainly by the time I returned, pale and bald, seven months later, everybody knew.  People may not know what kind of cancer or surgery I had (once in awhile, people still ask me if I am planning to “have kids,” and to my mind, they are always implying, “the normal way.”)  But they sure as hell know I’m the girl who had cancer.

But four years is a long time in my line of work; turn-over is steady.  This past summer, I started sharing an office with a lovely new attorney.  She’s quick and funny, constantly exuding positive energy.  She’s a total delight.  We’ve chatted a lot over the past few months about our families, partners, and interests, but until the other day, I’d never had occasion to share my cancer story with her.  In a way, it was kind of liberating.  But then, a few weeks ago, I started to realize that in order for me to feel truly connected to someone, in order for them to know who I really am, they need to know about cancer. 

A few weeks ago, a very young attorney from another unit in my office died suddenly of liver cancer.  I didn’t know her, but when the email circulated, and I saw the picture of her bright, beautiful young face, it was like a knife through my heart.  I wanted to cry and spit for this person I didn’t even know.  I knew it could have just as easily been me.

In the wake of this news, my officemate made a few passing comments about the tragedy of this woman’s death.  Strangely – or not – I found myself unable to utter even a word in agreement or acknowledgement.  I felt smothered by the legacy of my own cancer fight, and invisible, because my new friend didn’t know about it. 

The moment passed, but I unconsciously filed it away, thinking about the pros and cons of keeping my cancer selectively secret, especially from someone with whom I felt I was developing a genuine connection.

 Then, earlier this week, it happened: the tampon that broke the camel’s back. 

What the hell is this?

Honestly, it’s hard to believe that in the four years since my hysterectomy, not once had anyone asked me for a tampon

Until Wednesday.

My officemate and another new attorney from the office were going out to lunch.  The new attorney needed a tampon, and my officemate wasn’t finding one in her bag.

“Emily, do you have a tampon?” she asked me, innocently.

My mind froze for an instant.  “A what?,” I thought to myself.  Like I was an alien from outer space being confronted with some bizarre earthling contraption, like a telephone.

I quickly shook myself out of my daze.  “No, I don’t,” I said neutrally.

A minute later, they were gone, and I sat at my desk, feeling awkward and exposed.

I reflected on the ridiculousness of the scenario.  My officemate and I are constantly cracking up; her sense of humor is one of the things I most love about her.  After the initial awkwardness passed, I thought to myself (and imagined saying to her), “OK, clearly I’m not the tampon girl.”

Later that afternoon, prompted by the Tampon Incident, I decided it was time to “come clean.”

“There’s something I want to share with you,” I began, and then matter-of-factly (and only a bit tearfully) told her the story of my diagnosis.  Her response was loving and appropriate, (“Em!!  EMMMM!”), devoid of stupid questions, and totally not weird.  There was no gasping or recoiling, or suddenly looking at me like I was about to drop dead.  I even took her through some old photos, so she could see me bald and gaunt (again, “Emmm!”), and see the hilarious evolution of my hair.  And of course I told her about First Descents.

I explained that I wanted her to know this about me, because it’s a huge part of who I am now, and I didn’t want her to think, in moments like the Tampon Incident, that I was acting weird without explanation.  She nodded and then remarked that she’d thought it peculiar that I hadn’t commented on the young attorney’s death.  “Exactly,” I said, explaining how that news had knocked me sideways.  She totally got it. 

Ultimately, she gave me a big hug, and thanked me for sharing everything with her.   

The rest of the day, I felt liberated and light-weight, like I’d just done something absolutely right for me, reclaiming control of my cancer story.  I was reminded that it’s mine to tell.

Posted in Humor, Life After Cancer | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

jet lag: a whirlwind trip to planet cancer

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Emily

Last fall, in the aftermath of my GI scopes, I remember coming home from work one evening and flashing back to the “bite blocker” being shoved between my teeth, and feeling like I was an escapee from some kind of horror movie.

What were these bizarre rituals to which I was now subject?  Was I just a full-time guinea pig as a result of my cancer?  Would the poking and prodding and scanning and scoping never end?

I am now a year further into my post-diagnosis journey, and I can comfortably say, no, it will not.  This is what my life looks like now.  If I am interested in staying alive, there is no point in fighting it.  I can be angry and sad all I want; but my life depends on this.  What I really ought to be doing is thanking Whomever for the chance to still be here, getting scoped and scanned on a regular basis, for the chance to try and realize some of my dreams – for myself, for the family I want to build, for the chance to create the elusive “something meaningful” that I hope will be my legacy on this earth.

It feels in a way that I have just returned from a lightning fast journey back to Planet Cancer –a place I no longer regularly dwell.  Like I’ve landed back after a trans-Atlantic flight, crossing the ocean back and forth in the span of a single day, and am wandering around a once-familiar landscape feeling light-headed, disoriented and fatigued.  And nostalgic for something I cannot name, perhaps for an innocence I have lost.

It feels in a way like I’m Superman, returning to life as Clark Kent after some miraculous, world-saving stunt.  Only in this version, the people I encounter in my life as Clark Kent actually know that I am Superman.  They know what I have fought, and endured, and how my heroism has manifested itself.  They want to acknowledge and congratulate me on the remarkable thing I have achieved.  But a moment later, they turn back to their own reality, while I, “Superman,” am left to wonder: What just happened?

There is no way to escape the isolation that accompanies the gown, the IV, the rolling into the operating theater.  It doesn’t matter that no one is cutting into me, pulling something essential out of me (along with the something deadly.)  Once you’ve been to that place, every sterile room, every masked and gloved person, is a reminder of the demons you have already fought.  There is no one who can go there with you.  It is yours alone.

Four days ago, I ran over 11 miles, in preparation for this weekend’s half-marathon.  For just over two hours I ran, strong, steady, unflinching.  Smiling, shoulders back, into the wind that whipped on Veteran’s Day.  I thought about the warriors I know; they are not the ones the day was named for, but they are the ones closest to my heart, so I honored them with each determined stride.  At the end of the run, I wanted to keep going.  I saw a glimpse of just how much further I can push myself, how much life there is in me, how boundless that force is.

As the weekend wore on, as I celebrated the ritual of “Fake Thanksgiving” that marks the annual visit from our California family, I felt the heaviness moving in.  I fought it off, with a glass of wine, snuggling with my niece and nephew, immersing myself in amazing fiction.  I did what I could.  But as Monday closed in, I felt like a deflating balloon, certainly not the same powerful woman who ran all those miles just a few days earlier.  This is what cancer does, even in the abstract, even when the threat is vague and remote.  It casts the entire world in a different palate.  Color drains.

It’s not the scopes, or even the preparation.  It’s no fun to be hungry all day, and spend all night on the toilet.  Honestly, the drugs are pretty sweet, and the whole thing is over before it begins.  No, it’s not the cameras up my arse and down my throat.  It’s what they signify.

It’s the fact that for the rest of my life, I will be waiting for cancer to strike again.  It’s the fact that I can never fully move on from the darkness that crept in four years ago, and which continues to lurk around the edges of my happiness.

So there are these days.  Days when I am catapulted back, pushed down sterile corridors, pricked with needles.

But these days pass.  The darkness recedes – perhaps not completely, but enough to allow the brilliance of the now to shine.

 

 

 

Posted in Life After Cancer, medicine, running | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

the whole story: thoughts inspired by “50/50″

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Emily

I am constantly running up against the thought that it’s time to stop this exercise, that my story is stale.  That it’s time to step aside and let some other young adult with cancer shout to the world – as if there were a finite number of ears to listen to us, a limited amount of psychic space for us all to share.  I mean, a few weeks ago when I visited my primary doctor’s office for a refill on my anti-depressant and to pick up referrals for my upcoming GI scopes, the attending said, “To look at you, you’d never know you were a patient.  That’s how it should be.”  I’m a healthy person.  Isn’t it time for me to stop writing about being sick?

Each day, as I look around me, I see things that I aspire to, that I want to be:  a stronger, more versatile yogi; a mother; a published author; a marathoner; a master gardener.  There is inspiration everywhere; there is so much to do.  There are so many angles to this story, so many chapters yet to be written.

What I don’t see when I look around me is acknowledgement of my experience as a young adult who has survived cancer.  Sure, in my confined universe of First Descents and Planet Cancer friends, I see myself reflected and honored.  But beyond that, in the world at large, not so much.  It’s this lingering sense of invisibility that keeps driving me to try and figure out how to explain my story to those who haven’t lived it, how to tell the whole of it.

With that in mind, I eagerly went to see “50/50” yesterday afternoon, with a survivor friend (and adoptive mother: how grateful am I to have her in my life?)  My pocket-pack of tissues at the ready, I sat down in the darkened theater fully expecting to see some significant part of my experience as a young adult facing cancer reflected on the screen.  But despite some truthful moments, for the most part, it never happened.

I accept and understand that every person’s experience with cancer is unique, but there was a universality that I longed to see on the big screen, depicted in a way that would hopefully make people who’ve never been through it understand the hell we have endured.  I can’t know what the film’s story looked like to someone who has never been diagnosed with cancer.  To me, as a survivor, it was lacking some essential part of our reality.

Maybe a protagonist who actually looked like shit as he went through treatment would have helped.  Joseph Gordon Levitt never appeared gaunt; his skin never took on that unmistakable chemo hue.  He looked like a healthy guy who shaved his head.

what's with the eyebrows? (as in, why does he have them?)

Maybe more than one scene depicting the emotional devastation of his diagnosis would have left me feeling like, Yeah, that’s it.  That’s the relentless pall that hangs over you when you’re in the middle of treatment, wondering if you’ll live or die.

Maybe if the film hadn’t shown Adam clinging to his mother as the anesthesiologist administered his drugs, and then breaking down as he’s wheeled into surgery.  Maybe if instead, they’d showed him all alone, facing a seemingly endless succession of doctors explaining things and asking him to sign forms while his mind, though blank, reeled with the reality that he was staring death in the face, I would have thought, Yup, been there.

I did experience that chill of recognition seeing the aerial shot of Adam being hoisted off of the gurney and onto the operating table; I did cringe as he vomited violently the night after his first round of chemo.  And I certainly laughed out loud many, many times, at the inept and absurd things that the people surrounding Adam did while they grappled with their own fears and demons.

But over-all, at the end of two hours, I felt like there was something vital missing from what the film portrayed.  Yes, it’s largely a comedy, and actually, in its humor, I thought the film and its gifted actors were quite successful.  But in its attempts to show the dark side – the REAL dark side, not some sanitized, palatable Hollywood version of the dark side – it certainly disappointed.

In the end, I’m not so interested in the reasons why “50/50” failed to achieve what I hoped it would.  What’s important, I guess, is why I wanted it to succeed in the ways that I had imagined.

Why do I need the world to understand what I went through – the suffering I endured, the indignities of treatment, the fear of facing death?  I’m almost four years out from my diagnosis; why does it matter?  At least in this instance, someone was trying to tell a story that was resonant in some basic ways with my own.  Do I appreciate that?  Absolutely?  Is it enough?  No, it’s not.

I guess the truth is that my own “alienation phase” has perhaps lasted much longer than I realized.  The feeling of invisibility lingers.

Each day, I have to push back against it.  Today, I had to directly confront my on-going inability to publicly celebrate a dear friend’s coming baby.  (Will I ever, ever get over it?)  Fortunately, there are those (including my friend) who understand, who are brimming with compassion.  But it feels like an endless cycle that I will be forced to repeat, a sense of different-ness that I will be unable to shake, at least until our own baby comes, and probably for much longer after that.

Today, too, I had to bristle, when I heard someone refer to a “real mother.”  As I wait to parent through adoption, the invisibility of my experience as a survivor is compounded by that of my childlessness.  No one can see the void that exists – where the person I was before my illness dwells, along with the child for whom I am waiting.

The good news is, I am getting better at all of it, through trial and error.  I am stumbling my way into defining my new reality honestly, truthfully.  I am working to embrace all of the wretched stuff that brought me to this moment that is so explosive, so full of promise, without having it drag me down, or hold me back.

I am working on telling the whole story.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in adoption, cancer, Film, Humor, Life After Cancer, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

a cat, and cancer’s complicating curse

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Emily

Last week, we put our first pet to sleep.  Gracie the orange tabby was with us for over ten years – through 9/11, our wedding, the arrival of Lucy the basset hound, cancer…the list goes on.  For a few weeks before that fateful trip to the vet, I was gripped with the sense that she was nearing death.  In an odd twist, my awareness of Gracie’s failing health put me in touch with a dormant anxiety about my own precarious state.  As I approach the four-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis, I suddenly have begun to feel that my time on the clock of good fortune is due to run out.  I am, after all, genetically pre-disposed to other types of cancer.  Cancer has already struck once, and I am only 39.  How much longer can I possibly enjoy my current state of good health before the monster once again rears its fearsome head?

To those whose families don’t include four-legged members, to those who haven’t faced a life-threatening illness, this might seem the height of irrationality.  But the simple fact is, we invest an inarticulable brand of love in those closest to us, and their loss brings our own inherent vulnerability into a blinding kind of focus.  I felt a genuine heartbreak when I kissed our weary orange cat goodbye, and her absence is still acutely felt in our home.  Surely, she was a cat, not a human companion, and the challenge in carrying on after her departure is not of grand proportion.  Nevertheless, something we loved is gone.

Li'l Gracie loved her luggage

As the staff at the vet’s talked me through Gracie’s prognosis, as I watched her shiver on the exam table, tears flowed freely.  I took in the information, and accepted pats on the arm and offers of tissues.  At one point, as I felt my heart swelling with sadness and my tears gathering force, I was gripped by a sudden urge to divulge my own cancer story.  How peculiar, and seemingly absurd – watching my diabetic cat confront life’s end put me immediately in mind of my own tangle with the Grim Reaper.

What on earth would I have said to the unassuming veterinarian, or the compassionate technician?  It’s not like I needed to explain why I was crying.  Surely, this was a scene played out in the veterinarian’s office hundreds of times.  My emotion was nothing new to these people; bearing witness to it is an inevitable part of their job.

How on earth could I possibly have explained to total strangers how my cat’s death called up my cancer fight?  More precisely, why did I feel the need to?

The reality may be that I am incapable of facing the specter of death in any form without it connecting in some way to the legacy of my illness.  The fear, the sadness, the anger – all of it gets called up.  It’s a self-involved reaction, and one that shames me.  I hope eventually to untangle it from the never-ending cycle of life and death that surrounds us all.  It is a universal.  It is not about me.

As I watched my sweet cat decline, I felt the reverberations of my own mortality.  I saw our family lose a beloved member, and figured I surely must be next.  This, I have learned over time, is the unique logical fallacy borne of the cancer experience:  that we, as survivors, are ticking time bombs in a way that those have never faced cancer are not.  The truth, more accurately expressed, is that we, as survivors, by virtue of our own dance with mortality, may have a keener sense of the fragility of the human condition.  It’s an insight we never sought to bear.  Sometimes, when we are forced to say goodbye to someone we love, it manifests itself as a complicating curse.  Fortunately, on good days, it serves to heighten the sweetness that we’re blessed to know.

 

 

Posted in Death, Family | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

not yet

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Emily

I’ve reached the point where I have a stock reply when people ask if I have children:  “Not yet.”  It’s simple, straightforward and conveys my intention to be a parent.  Most people who ask me don’t know about my cancer history, so even though I always feel my heart sink a bit each time I hear the question, I don’t begrudge people for asking.

Today, I had the unexpected experience of someone taking this otherwise innocuous question to another level.  In court this afternoon, I found myself in a sidebar conversation with two other attorneys and the master presiding in the courtroom.  We were discussing a case involving a father of advanced years who had produced a child with a much younger woman with a long drug history (and 8 other children whom she had not raised.)  The conversation was somewhat pointless, as the master had already rendered her decision, and it mostly involved the parties involved discussing the burdens of child rearing.

At one point, for no discernable reason, the master looked at me smiling and said, “Do you have children?”

I offered my stock reply.  “Not yet.”

She persisted, leaning forward from the bench and staring deliberately at my belly.

“Any coming?” she asked.

I was stunned, and felt my face flush as my mind raced to images of tumbleweeds blowing through my abdomen.  I began walking away, laughing nervously.

“No,” I said simply.

All I could do was shake my head.

First, I kicked myself.  Why didn’t I just shoot back:  “Actually, yes.  My husband and I are waiting to adopt, and one day soon we’ll welcome a beautiful new-born baby into our home.”  Why did I freeze?

I quickly realized that not every moment is a “teaching moment.”  It’s not always appropriate to try and educate people about your specific circumstances, or the fact that something they’ve just said might be hurtful, or offensive, in light of those circumstances.

But then I stop again:  why do we always have to hold our tongues, and make excuses for the people who offend us, and refrain from vocalizing the hurt that people inflict when they make assumptions, or ignore the possibilities of a reality beyond their own limited experience?  I don’t really feel like I should be charged with enlightening people – attorneys, no less, who work in family court, and see adoptions happening every day – about the fact that there is more than one way to be an expectant parent.  But the truth is, I am tired of falling mute, of feeling smothered by the pain of my cancer experience and everything it has stolen from me, at the moments when I most need to cry out and be heard.

Perhaps the next time I find myself in one of these awkward situations, I’ll have the presence of mind, and balance of emotion, to offer a simple explanation of my status as a waiting parent.  The trick, I guess, is separating that fact from the memories of the illness that brought me to this place.  That’s the place where I get tripped up, where the legacy of my cancer pulls most forcefully at my heart.

In a wonderful bit of cosmic synergy, later in the day, after this bizarre interlude, I shared messages with a bunch of members of my young adult cancer posse about the upcoming film “50/50,” about a young man diagnosed with cancer.  For the first time in our lifetimes, a major film has been made about our experience.  We’re all unique, having endured different variations on the main theme of being young and facing cancer.  But there’s a universality to what we’ve been through that draws us all together, and particularly when there’s a chance for a wider, non-cancer audience to get a taste of what we’ve all been through, there’s a sense of cohesion and community that sustains and uplifts me.

Especially on days like today.

 

Posted in adoption, fellow fighters, Infertility, Life After Cancer, Work | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

ready for anything

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Emily

If there’s one thing cancer teaches us, it’s to be flexible, and ready to adapt to any and all circumstances.  Try as we might to control our surroundings, to plan for an ever-elusive future, there’s simply no way we can know what tomorrow will bring.

By way of example:  for weeks now, I’ve been looking forward to this coming weekend.  For the first time, my beloved nephew is scheduled to come for an overnight visit BY HIMSELF!  This is, in the life of any doting aunt, a momentous occasion.  When the little man whispered to my sister at the end of his Fourth of July visit that he wanted to stay with us for an extra night while his parents went home to New York, I did a silent little fist pump and thought, “It’s official: he totally loves us!”

the pumpkin in question (with the author)

Since hatching the plan for our weekend together, I have secured tickets for a Phillies game (including the Cliff Lee back to school gym bag!) and harbored visions of treating our favorite seven year-old to his first ever cheesesteak.  Chances are, I’ve been more excited about this visit than the boy himself.

But then, Hurricane Irene started roiling in the Atlantic, and suddenly the weekend is very much in question.  The plans I had to kick off the festivities with some First Descents shenanigans in New York before heading home with Oscar in tow, have already been jettisoned because of the coming storm.  The Phillies game has been rescheduled to Saturday afternoon.  And as of this moment (early evening Thursday), I don’t even know if I will be going up tomorrow to collect my guy and bring him down for the weekend.

Everything is up in the air.

uh-oh: here she comes

But really, when is that not the case?  We have fantasies about what life should look like.  We imagine unbridled lunacy, moments of delirious laughter and love, with friends and family.  We plan trips.  We believe we have some measure of control over what the next hours, days, weeks will look like.

Then the storm comes, or cancer comes, and life is suddenly a slate wiped clean of everything we thought we knew, of every plan that we’ve hatched, every dream we’ve nurtured.  From small things, like an overnight visit with a beloved nephew, to big things, like the chance to have your own child – it all hangs in precarious balance, subject to disruption at a moment’s notice.

I’ve spent the last 24 hours or so mentally preparing myself for my vision of this perfect weekend to be completely scrapped.  It makes me a little sad, but if things don’t work out, hubby and I will perhaps replace tickling wars and reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with popcorn and some good movies while we listen to the rain fall and the wind howl.

Eventually, the storm will pass, and we’ll start planning the next perfect weekend that may never come to pass.

So dream on.  Just be ready for anything.


Posted in Baseball, Family, Life After Cancer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

third time’s the charm: first descents, montana, july 2011

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Emily

They say the third time’s the charm.  But how can I possibly measure my most recent trip to the divine land of First Descents love and laughter against my previous sojourns?  It’s simply not appropriate.  So maybe all I can do it report, from the current front-lines.

My own cancer experience continues to recede, however slowly and grudgingly.  I would venture to say my body is once again, almost completely my own.  I hate to break it to you, my dear disease, but all you have ultimately served to do is make me a stronger and fiercer version of the person I used to be.  These words actually escaped my lips the other day, “I feel younger now than I did when I was 26.”

The Montana Family

Attribute that last statement in large part to the week I just spent in Montana, in the rivers and lakes of Glacier, with an outrageously beautiful group of young adults, many of whom have yet to see 30.  The energy, defiance and intelligence they exuded quite literally revitalized me.

Dance party, Going-to-the-Sun Road

Never mind that many of these extraordinary people are battling, or have recently battled, cancer.  If you came across us in a crowd, or along the side of Going-to-the-Sun Road, in stopped traffic, the last words you would use to describe us would be “weak,” “afraid,” or “sick.”  For we are the most vibrant, alive, joyful people you could ever hope to encounter.  You know you want to be just like us.  Unfortunately, the only way you can join our fabulous club is to stare death square in the face.  Still interested?

This was my third and likely final First Descents camp – at least as a “camper.”  Knowing that, I had to take the literal plunge – into the icy waters of Lake McDonald and the Flathead River, and experience the magic of First Descents the way it was initially conceived, in the cockpit of a whitewater kayak.

Patch, one of our absurdly gifted, patient and good-looking instructors, will tell you that I came up from my first trip under water while learning to wet exit and burst into tears.  I had so much fear built up in me about what the experience would be like, that when I finally confronted it, I just about imploded under the weight of my own anxiety.  A few minutes later, though, when I successfully wet-exited, my perspective shifted completely.  I popped out of the water, shaking my head like a soggy dog, and thought, “Well, then:  another mortal fear confronted.  Let’s do this.”

True, that was on a still lake, just feet from the shore, under very controlled circumstances, but it still felt like a triumph.

My beloved Spam hat

It wasn’t until the very last day of camp that I would be forced to wet exit in the midst of a roaring class-III rapid.  That, it turns out, was my REAL fear. But when it came time to finally confront it, I’d developed so much confidence in my skills, and so much trust in my instructors and fellow campers, that I wasn’t even actually afraid.  Instead of worrying about drowning, or smashing my face into a rock, I worried about the Spam hat that I’d affixed to my helmet becoming dislodged and floating down river.  Needless to say, when I emerged from the water, and grabbed onto the back of Iceman’s boat, and realized the hat was still attached, I felt an exuberant, deranged sense of relief and pride.  These are the moments that you can only experience with your First Descents family; these are the things that make life as a survivor an indescribable joy ride.

Camp this year also gave me the chance to grieve in a very precise way for the friends I have lost to cancer since the last time I was with First Descents, in April of 2010.  One of the greatest gifts that First Descents gives young adult survivors is the chance to relate and connect around our disease on our own terms.  As at past camps, the week in Montana was filled with quiet conversations about diagnoses, treatment and the reactions of our family and friends to our illness.  And as always, on the last night, we joined arms and cried together, and gazed into a candle-lit pool, remembering those we’ve lost, the parts of ourselves that we can never reclaim, and the lives we imagined we’d lead.

I left Montana with this peculiar fullness of heart that I experience only with my First Descents family – sorrow for what we have endured, gratitude for what we share, and hope for a future filled with our crazy brand of love.

 

Posted in fellow fighters, First Descents, Life After Cancer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment