One of my friends on Facebook, Michael Markstahler, posted this essay on his experiences with cancer. It is so eloquently written that I asked if I could share it on my post. So many of Michael's experiences were also my experiences. Thank you Michael for permission to share with my other friends.
Cancer is one of those words that makes you go quiet. For a large number of people what they hear is “now you are going to die”. Because of this profound meaning, learning you have cancer gets your attention.
Cancer is a tricky thing. It is a mutation of cells from your own body. What caused that mutation? You will not find an honest oncologist that will tell you they know. That single fact is why we have the phrase ‘cancer survivor’ for people declared cancer free after a bout with it. One is not cured because no one knows why it first appeared.
It was the cancerous cells that were beaten back not the first cause. Not knowing the first cause leaves you with the possibility it will be back. Thus ‘cancer survivor’; so far you are still here with us, you are still surviving.
The beginning of June 2017 I was diagnosed with lymphoma. Lymphoma is a slow growing cancer. In fact in its early stages the standard protocol is ‘watchful waiting’ and doing nothing. This phase can last for years.
Mine however was not discovered until stage IV. I had already had it for years not knowing. Mine had progressed to a fast developing aggressive version. The oncologist laid out for me there was about a 16% chance of survival. There were months of chemo and anti-body therapy. This month is the one year anniversary of my being told l was cancer free.
I know some survivors march in parades, raise funds for research, radically change the direction of their life. It never affected me that way. I have led my life as a collector of experiences. Looking back, while there were a few, I think there were not many, damn stupid things I tried. Perhaps a few more simply stupid things. But mostly, I have been restless, I bore easily. I like the act of taking on something new. That is why my career ‘path’ looks like a zigzagged line rather than an advancing step by step predictor of the next phase.
I have just started my second year of ‘preventive’ immune therapy treatments designed to lower the statistical chance of re-occurrence from 25% down to about 7%. I feel fine, life is great. My wife’s fear of losing me and going on without me has subsided. We are happy.
But one should not just collect experiences for a hobby. The experiences should change you, round edges, crack you open a bit creating new different sharp edges, give you a few yet unexplored grassy knolls where you can stand up on your hind legs and get a new different look at things.
It is not the chemo. I have been sick before so I was ready to be sick with chemo. I had heard stories. Remember getting food poisoning or the flu? Imagine getting both of those together, at regularly scheduled intervals, for months and months. That is kind of like chemo. You have no choice it is something you simply endure and wade through.
No, what I learned was humility. I learned it is not about me. It is about the story of life; the ongoing rolling flow of it. I sat for hours in that room again and again quietly watching all kinds of folks, some clearly losing the battle, still going on. Some were afraid, some wrapped themselves in dignity others with a rough cloak of determination. On occasion I would read the obituary of someone I had chatted with a few weeks before. In those chats I had listened to their life stories, about their grand kids, their hopes, their plans, how the damn cancer had put things off.
One fellow told me he was getting chemo and radiation. That was to shrink the large cancerous tumor growing inside of him to a size the surgeons thought might be operable. He was running his business from that chemo chair. His foremen would pop in to get instructions for the day or to have a planning session.
Just this morning I received a telephone call from the son of a friend. He has been fighting for 18 years. Two years ago the cancer came back. He is in the hospital again. His son does not think Rock will be coming home one more time. When I first met him he had been a survivor for 15 years, excited about retirement from a career as a bartender and looking forward to immersing himself into the culture of downtown Champaign. For two years he got to do that.
My year with cancer, I like to think, helped me become more tolerant, excepting and more humble than I was before I got the call “Mr. Markstahler your scan shows tumors throughout your body, we need you to come in today for more tests.”
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