I’m a two-time cancer survivor: non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and
breast, 2010 and 2011, respectively. However,
my cancer survivor status doesn’t define me.
It has helped shape my life, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to
other events of my life.
On a beautiful spring day, April 28, 1986, one of my very
best friends died in a car accident when I was seventeen, she was sixteen. She and two of my other friends were coming
back from buying prom shoes. It hit me hard, I mourned for at least a
year-maybe more. I learned about death
then, about the fragility of life and how temporary our time on earth can be. I
learned that sometimes you don’t get any warning that it’s all going to change.
I learned about the stages of grief-how they’re not linear, and everyone moves
through them differently and at their own pace.
So six years later, when my 48-year old father died suddenly from acute
arrhythmia, I knew what struggles lay ahead.
I was only 23 years old when he died.
I was a daddy’s girl and I was devastated. However, and this might sound strange to
some…I had learned so much from my friend’s death, that the process of grieving
that I went through for my friend, taught me how to not lose my mind when
grieving for my father. Oh, I grieved.
How could he be taken from me so early? Well, the main reason is because
he was a heavy smoker. I was smoking at
the time too. I knew I needed to
quit. It’s pretty impactful when your
father’s coroner tells you to your face the last thing his kids should be doing
is smoking. It only took me four years
to actually quit, but I haven’t touched the nasty things in almost twenty
years. The third event was my true personal brush with death. The grim reaper had his hand on my hand and
was tugging pretty hard. I didn’t want to
go. I was almost 35 years old and trying
to birth the child, a son, my husband and I had worked so very hard to
create. I had suffered four miscarriages
and an ectopic pregnancy before finally bringing a healthy baby to term. I’ll spare you the gory details, but what
happened was that after an emergency C-section, I hemorrhaged for about 12
hours before they could figure out what was happening to me. I was in the ICU
for 4 days and the regular maternity floor for another three. My beautiful newborn son was brought to me
every four hours for those four days in the ICU to nurse so that we wouldn’t
miss the window for us to bond in that way. The recovery from that event was
long, painful and hard. I was bedridden for
weeks. I couldn’t even give my son a
bath for three weeks.
But, eventually, I did recover. The next six years were full of all of the
busyness that being a young parent brings as well as the adoption of a
beautiful boy from Guatemala (the birth of my first son left me incapable of
carrying another baby). Unfortunately, my husband and I did not take care of
our relationship during this time, and it fell apart, seemingly suddenly in
2010. We had been divorced for three
weeks when I ended up in the emergency room, with a cancer diagnosis, on
Father’s Day that year.
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| Getting my haircut in 2010 before it all fell out. |
Ironically, I was in the best shape of my life at that
time. I was running, kickboxing, and
doing yoga on a regular basis. I had a full marathon under my belt and was
geared up to do some other local races. It was what was keeping me sane. Honestly,
I think it was what got me through the rough chemo treatments the next 5
months. I responded extremely well to
treatments and was in remission in no time.
I decided to train for a full marathon in Savannah, Georgia the next
fall for Team-in-Training. Team-in-Training is part of the Leukemia Lymphoma
Society and I wanted to give back. I was
in full-on fundraising and training mode when in August of 2011 I felt a lump
in my breast. No!! This could not be
happening! How could I possibly find the strength to go through cancer again??
Within a few days I learned that I had early stage breast cancer and endured a
lumpectomy. A couple weeks later I
started radiation (no chemo this time-yay! I could keep my hair this time). And…I
thought about quitting my training for the full marathon. What a stupid distance anyway-26.2 miles!
Crazy! But, I couldn’t. I had raised too
much money and come too far. I kept
going. I had the support of several
friends who ran with me on the long runs and checked in with me every day to
see how I was doing. After twelve weeks
of training, and six and half weeks of daily radiation, I flew to Georgia by
myself. I moved my last radiation
appointment to the morning so I could catch my flight that afternoon. Though it wasn’t pretty, I finished the race,
and I kept it under 5-hours. Not my
goal, but oh, well. The point is, I showed up.
I kept going. Truly, it was not
easy and I really wanted to quit at times.
But, what having cancer twice finally, finally, finally,
really hammered into my head is that you only live once. That’s it. And, you have no clue how long
that will be. And, you must embrace it.
It-being life! Do things that make you feel ALIVE. Love. Let yourself be
loved. Give back. Listen to live music-outside if at all
possible. Get out of your ‘comfort zone’.
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| Me trying to stay positive in 2010! |
And, if I
can’t convince you of this, let me share three quotes that remind me to be ALIVE.
You don’t get to choose how you are going to die. Or when.
You can only decide how you are going to live. Now.~Joan Baez
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist,
that’s all.~ Oscar Wilde
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk
on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly
alive. ~ Thich Nhat Han
Or, you can adopt what the Unitarian Universalists say when
leaving a service to head out into the day and the world: I am “open to life,
expecting to love, and prepared to serve”. Which brings me to my mission trip
to Nepal with Dr. Richard Deming and Above & Beyond Cancer. A group of 23
of us, half cancer survivors, half care-givers, leave tomorrow night for
Kathmandu, Nepal. We will travel half
way around the world to spend time at three cancer hospitals, one of which is
pediatric. We are bringing very few personal items so that we can pack our
suitcases with quilts and medical supplies.
This trip certainly qualifies as helping me feel alive! There is nothing
like seeing new sights, experiencing new smells, and most of all meeting new
people to make one feel alive. I look
forward to knowing, and giving my love, to the others on the trip as well as
those we will meet in Nepal. We will all have the beautiful opportunity to
serve and provide hope to the earthquake survivors and cancer patients in
Nepal. According to Dr. Deming, the
survival rate for cancer in Nepal pales in comparison to the United
States.
My trip, and that of my caregiver and rock, Justin Hyde, is
graciously being sponsored by Suku Radia, CEO of Banker’s Trust. I am beyond
grateful and honored to have been chosen for the trip and to have this generous
sponsorship from one of Des Moines’ greatest philanthropists.
And, in the spirit of giving back…I have committed to
raising money for the YMCA’s cancer survivorship program. The
program started in August and the needs range from meditation pillows to
12-week scholarships for cancer survivors. As a two-time cancer survivor, I am
thrilled with the Above + Beyond Cancer survivorship programming. It has
already changed the lives of cancer survivors and caregivers, and I am proud to
be a part of this new effort. This new program will be incredible and will give
more people than ever access to a much-needed, quality survivorship
programming. Please consider a donation to this incredible program:
And...in the
words of Harold Whitman, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself
what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world
needs is people who have come alive.”
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| Two Days ago, Dr. Demming and I celebrating after the Des Moines Triathlon and looking forward to Nepal! |
