No amount of mental fortitude can prepare you to hear the words, “you have cancer.” I first heard them March 8, 2019 ― a day I will never forget. It was the day my world was turned upside down and my idea of the “invulnerability of youth” was shaken from its mooring. What began as a run at my local gym led to a late night at the emergency room. About halfway through my run, I nearly collapsed with excruciating back pain. The prognosis from the emergency room’s physician shifted from indigestion to appendicitis to a softball-sized tumor encasing the arteries that provided blood flow to the lower half of my body.
Through what seemed like an eternity of referrals, MRIs, CT scans, blood panels, more referrals and finally a biopsy, I received a phone call mid-morning on a Saturday and heard words uttered with calculated surety, but with underlying warmth and compassion: “It is cancer.”
At 27 years old, I was diagnosed with stage 3c testicular cancer, which had developed and metastasized to lymph nodes spread throughout my abdomen. That phone call was the beginning of a journey that consisted of four-and-a-half months of chemotherapy, complications, week-long hospital stays and intensive surgery. I am thankful and fortunate now to be six months into remission.
Who Am I?
As I progressed through (and continue on) my cancer journey, I was quite confused as to what to call myself. At what point am I a cancer patient? In active treatment? In remission? A survivor? Will I ever know? Will it ever be clearly defined? The desire to cling to a definition, a clearly defined phase, was the desire for some form of consistency and groundedness in a tumultuous and downright scary time.
I have spoken to others diagnosed with cancer, and it appears that my mental experience is not an isolated one. Those words carry the weight of the interruption and chaos that is about to enter in and dominate your life. It is almost as if the diagnosis strips away your identity, and due to the complete disruption, you are now simply a cancer patient.
However, through intense reflection, discussion and research, I discovered that I was not merely a “cancer patient” but rather a “survivor.” The National Cancer Institute defines a “survivor” as one at any point along the spectrum, from diagnosis to end of life. Waking up, going to work, eating lunch, going to appointments, going to your sister’s 13th birthday party, going to school, going to a concert, not being able to get out of bed, vomiting, going hiking, laying down to sleep ― through it all, you are a survivor. You go through all of this with the harrowing knowledge that your body is literally poisoning itself from the inside out. It’s a frightening existence.
Survival Comes In Many Forms
But existence in the purgatory of endless tests, rounds of treatment, battling symptoms and confronting fears in the hopes of being cured IS survival. It is mental, physical, emotional and spiritual survival. Survival starts the day of diagnosis, when your mind is confronted with thoughts of your own mortality. Survival is the day you choose to tell your family, trying to battle the thoughts of feeling that you are burdening your family by telling them of how diseased your body is. Survival is the day you realize you cannot physically handle driving yourself to treatment, so you swallow your pride and accept help from others. Survival is endless rounds of chemotherapy. Survival is the buildup of scar tissue at the crease of your elbows from months of needle sticks. Survival is telling yourself “you can do this” when you feel like you can’t. Survival is choosing to go out in public despite being humiliated at losing all of your hair and eyebrows. Survival is showing your pre-cancer ID to servers and hearing, “what happened to you, you don’t look anything like this anymore.”
Survival is the joy of finishing the last round of chemo. Survival is the fear of death the morning of surgery. Survival is follow-up scans and bloodwork. Survival is existence. Survival simply is.
Recognizing Survivorship
Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, a physician, cancer survivor and a founder of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, published a 1985 essay titled “Seasons of Survival: Reflections of a Physician with Cancer.” The following is an excerpt that beautifully depicts the struggle within survivorship:
“Survival, however, was not one condition, but many. It was desperate days of nausea and depression. It was elation at the birth of a daughter in the midst of treatment. It was the anxiety of waiting for my monthly chest film to be taken and lying awake nights feeling for lymph nodes. It was the joy of eating Chinese food for the first time after battling radiation burns of the esophagus for four months. These reflections and many others are a jumble of memories of a purgatory that was touched by sickness in all its aspects but was neither death nor cure. It was survival…”
Each June, we recognize National Cancer Survivor Month. The American Cancer Society estimates that 1.8 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2020, which ushers in 1.8 million people into survivorship ― joining 17 million other Americans. So next time you meet someone who is at any point in their cancer journey, see them and honor them for the survivor they are.
Follow Josh on Instagram @imjoshstone for more on survivorship, support, advocacy and education.
