Writing Through Cancer

He said it doesn’t look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad.

(From:  “What the Doctor Said,” by Raymond Carver)

“Write about the moment when the doctor said, ‘Cancer.”  It’s usually one of the first prompts I offer in the beginning session of my “writing through cancer” workshops.  That moment of confirmation, the seconds in which a physician delivers the words that will, in an instant, change your life forever, is something everyone in the group shares, an event that evokes strong emotions as it gets written about and described.

I heard those words myself, or some version of them, over eighteen years ago after a routine mammogram, one that became, as the technician kept returning to the room to say, “I need to take a couple more images,” anything but routine.  But my diagnosis was not life threatening, not the sort that sends you home thinking about mortality.  This past week I heard the words again, only I am the wife of the man to whom the surgeon’s words were directed.  “Stage 3.  Kidney cancer.”  Surgery in two and one half weeks to remove one kidney and determine if the cancer has spread as, we could easily tell, he suspects.

I listened, intent on capturing everything discussed in my notebook, turning to study my husband’s face as together, we looked at the CT scan and listened to the surgeon’s explanation.  At one point, I felt the rush of emotion and forced myself to not cry, so that I could stay focused on how John was receiving the news.  I remembered Joan Didion’s words, “Life changes.  Life changes in an instant.”  And so it was changing, right then, in a brightly lit examination room of a surgeon’s office.

As we drove home, I said, “I always thought I’d be the first to go.”  For the past several months, our focus has been on me, my heart failure and treatment–a condition, ironically, the cardiologist believes was likely the result of damage to my heart caused by the radiation I had eighteen years ago.  My husband, on the other hand, has always been remarkably healthy.  His father, a physician, died just days before his 99th birthday, and it was always an assumption that John had his father’s genes and would likely live as long or longer.  Maybe he will yet; maybe not.

You want to forget, for things to be normal, the way they were… It’s like stepping into a swift river; the current of the ordinary grabs you, and before you know it you’re being buffeted against the rocks, on your way over the falls as you watch the shore recede.   It may all be over so soon, you worry in midstream, you won’t have time to do anything at all.–(D.L., cancer patient from a Writing Through Cancer workshop exercise)

“Well,” I said, quoting Gilda Radner, ‘It’s always something,’ isn’t it?”

“It is,” he replied, but I just didn’t expect this.”

“Nor did I,” I said, although we knew, from his family physician’s manner and urgency in getting him to a urologist and surgeon, that it was serious.  “But we’re at the stage in life when “somethings” like this are not unusual.”

“I guess so,” he said quietly.

We rode on, negotiating traffic in relative silence.   Alice Hoffman’s words, written after her cancer recovery that appeared in the New York Times, were rattling around in my head.  “ These are the chapters of your life that wallop you and teach you and bring you to tears,” she said, “that invite you to step to the other side of the curtain, the one that divides those of us who must face our destiny sooner rather than later.”(–August 2000).

That evening, I urged him to go to his weekly pool game as always, and I went ahead to have an early supper with a close friend of ours.  “We’re not going to dwell on this,” I said.  “We’ll keep living normally until we can’t.”

And that is what we are trying to do.  We’re quieter, yes, but on Thursday,  we awakened to a beautiful early autumn day and spontaneously decided to drive north from Toronto and visit the McMichael art gallery, which houses many works from Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, paintings we both love.  The quiet beauty of the grounds, a breeze whispering through tall pines and the first signs of color in the deciduous trees along the route were a balm for both of us.  Last night we went with friends to hear a pianist we did not know, an extraordinary blind artist.  All of us were astounded and enthralled with his selections of  Schumann, Chopin, Beethoven and Prokofiev.

I remarked to a friend that I now realize how, in all the years I’ve been leading the writing groups for cancer patients and survivors, they have been my greatest teachers, preparing me, it now seems, to be able to face this new set of challenges and a husband’s diagnosis in a way that I could not have done many years earlier.  “Cancer,” poet Judy Rohm wrote, “is not a gift, but a lesson/ full of seeing now and loving presently” (“A Lesson,” in:  The Cancer Poetry Project, V. 1, 2001).  And it is living, with open hearts and enjoyment of the present, that we have chosen to do as we navigate through these next few weeks.  Writing in the preface of Survival Lessons (2015), author Alice Hoffman explained,

I wrote this book to remind myself of the beauty of life, something that’s all too easy to overlook during the crisis of illness or loss… I forgot that our lives are made up of equal parts sorrow and joy, and that it is impossible to have one without the other.  This is what makes us human…I wrote to remind myself that in the darkest hour the roses still bloom, the stars still come out at night.  And to remind myself that, despite everything that was happening to me, there were still choices I could make.  

Writing Suggestions:

• Write about the moment you first heard “you have cancer.”  What thoughts and emotions raced through you?  What do you remember from that moment?
• If you or your spouse was diagnosed with cancer, how did you choose to live each day and why?  What helped you get through the fears, worry, surgeries and aftermath?
• What lessons has cancer taught you?  How successful have you been in putting those lessons into practice?
• If a loved one or a close friend has been diagnosed, how have you shown your love and support?  What would you say to someone who is experiencing this with a family member or dear friend to help them through this kind of crisis?