Writing Through Cancer

Sometimes I have trouble listening to my body, but for the past two weeks, a flare-up of colitis, knee pain and another round of additional tests and medications for my heart failure were bodily aggravations too loud to ignore.  I unwillingly admitted that I was in no condition to dance, much less enjoy some brisk walks through the neighborhood with my dog.  I was grounded, and I wasn’t happy about it.  Whether it’s due to aging, illness or other physical aggravation, having one’s life impeded by one’s body has profound impact on mood and perspective.  By the end of the first week, I was dogged by a gray cloud of self-pity, worry and the blues.

I’m not a trained dancer, far from it, but I love to move, and there’s nothing better than my dance class to elevate my mood.  Led by a joyful and energetic instructor, I join a group of women called “The Vintage Dancers,” all of them in my age group, to dance.  Don’t be misled by the name.  This is no ordinary group of older women.  Our hour together is fast-paced, aerobic, learning and remembering new routines, and fun.  While I no longer move with the speed or the ease I had in my younger years,  I move–and I laugh–a lot.  I leave the class feeling energized, lighter in spirit, and despite the medical issues that have dogged me for the last few months, I feel healthier, younger, and more optimistic.

A few years ago a friend of mine sent a link to a video of a young woman, Tiffany Staropoli, diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer in May of 2013.  In addition to 3 surgeries, chemotherapy, a variety of alternative healing approaches, she also relied on her “personal brand of dance therapy,” and posted her video, “” on You Tube.

Her video went viral in no time–and no wonder!  I watched it three times through, laughing out loud at the unabashed exuberance and delight captured in the different scenes of Tiffany dancing to Great Big Sea’s “When I’m Up, I Can’t Get Down.”  She was always enthusiastic, if not necessarily graceful.  But she had a point to make.  “Even with something as traumatic as cancer,”she told the interviewer, “it’s still possible to have a good time.”  When asked what she thought of her dancing, she laughed, “It’s terrible…I crack myself up.”  Well, she cracked me up too—her fun and joy was infectious,  undoubtedly the reasib the video has been viewed by so many thousands of people.

“I’m not a professional dancer,” Tiffany states on her website.  “In fact, I’m a decidedly HORRIBLE dancer.  But over the years, when alone or with my undeniably patient husband, I would break out into an awkward and often bizarre dance to add a little flair to the moment.  A sprinkle of goofiness to lighten the mood or crack myself up.  It always lifted my spirits.  So I told my husband to force me to dance when I started to backslide.  And record it.”  And he did.   The”Dancing Through Cancer”video shows Tiffany dancing at the surgery center, hospital, and chemotherapy clinic.  It shows her dancing when she wanted to and sometimes, when she didn’t, but “always, always, ending up smiling by the end of it.”

Call it dance therapy or just a personal love of moving to music,  I get it.  I’ve danced my way through more than one difficult life chapter.  Soon after my first marriage ended with my husband’s death, I often danced after my daughters were asleep, turning out the lights in the living room, putting Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” on the turntable, and dancing crazily around the room until my spirits lightened, and I had exhausted myself and was ready to sleep.   Sometimes I cried as I danced, but tears didn’t last for long.  More often, I cracked myself up, like Tiffany, even though no one was watching or filming.   During that turbulent and painful time, my daughters and I also danced together, devising crazy routines to seventies’ hits, even performing them for family and friends, with the result of everyone breaking up in laughter.  It wasn’t about dance as much as it was about fun and having a good time.  It was an important element in helping  ourselves recover from grief and loss.

Susan Gubar, in her article, “Cancer Humor,” offers some examples of finding humor to help alleviate the burden of serious illness and periods of hardship.  “Cracking up,” she says, “may be a better option than breaking down.” She tells of author Nina Riggs, who later died of terminal cancer, and her memoir, The Bright Hour.  Riggs commiserated with a friend also dealing with breast and together, imagining a business called “Damaged Goods,” that would feature a line of morbid greeting cards with sentiments like:

Thank you for the taco casserole. It worked even better than my stool softeners.

Thoughts and prayers are great, but Ativan and pot are better.

 All your phone messages about how not knowing exactly what’s going on with me has stressed you out really helped me put things in perspective.

 In-Between Days, a graphic memoir by Teva Harrison, is an honest account of living with cancer, but it’s peppered with illustrations that also convey the author’s humor.  In one, after describing how she had to be positioned on a mold to her body, then further immobilized by shrink wrap, Harrison wrote that she felt like supermarket sushi and created a drawing titled,  “On A Platter.”  “The gift of these creative works,” Gubar explains, is that “they foster a sense of community with the living…we are not alone in what we go through.”

When we’re up, we can’t feel down… In the difficult period of becoming a single mother in 1981, I remember singing along to “Twenty Mile Zone,” a song written and performed by the former Dory Previn, composed after her divorce from composer Andre Previn. She described a woman alone in her car, screaming at the top of her lungs while she drove.  She is stopped by a police officer and questioned, but very soon they are both driving down the road and screaming–she in her car, he on his motorcycle–each relieving their frustrations!  Singing along with Previn not only helped relieve the stress I felt, it made me laugh.

Each of us has different activities that help to elevate our spirits.  Art, music, movement, meditation, play, writing poetry, yoga or a walk along the seashore or a trail are just a few activities known to be beneficial to our well-being.  Sharing some of those activities with others  has the impact of cheering us up.  I think of the women’s choir here in Toronto who performed last week.  It’s not a professional choir, just a group of women who love to sing together.  Their sense of community, the energy and fun were enough to want to make me sign up and join them.  (In fact, I did.)

Remember, having a good time doesn’t deny the reality of cancer or heart disease, but it does help us cope with illness more effectively.  Think of Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live, Michael Landon, of Bonanza, at his final appearance on show, or Jennie Nash, who wrote The Victoria’s Secret Catalogue Never Stops Coming.  Each reminds us of the importance of finding humor in our situation—and, despite everything, of having a good belly laugh now and then.  Like the Great Big Sea’s song says, “When I’m Up, I Can’t Get Down.  Having fun is good for us and infectious for those around us.  It’s essential to health and to life.

Writing Suggestions:

Write about the kinds of things that make you feel better when you’re down.  What helps life your spirits?  Is it something that makes you laugh out loud?  Does it make you smile in spite of yourself?  Give you solace or joy?  Laughter is good medicine, but so is any activity that gives us solace, pleasure, and happiness.

What activities give you joy?  Make you smile or laugh a little?  Dance?  Painting?  Yoga?  Singing?  Playing with grandchildren?  Watching silly movies?  Write about laughter, smiling, or just being silly, and why, when you’re up, you just can’t feel down.

Remember, laughter and having fun are contagious.  We all feel better for it.