Hey First name / friend,
Last month at my 10-year cancer check up, my oncologist said “Jodie, we don't even say you are in remission. You are cured! You never have to return here again.”
I cried as she said it. I smile-cried leaving the hospital (photo above) and I am teary as I type this. I am so freaking grateful, so freaking lucky, so freaking changed.
And I realise as I reflect on my cancer journey how it has been a tremendous example of experiencing two sides of the coin at once. For ten years.
The side I talk a lot about to all of you is the gratitude, the changed life outlook, the need for early detection, how to support others etc.
But the side I don't talk a lot about is the fear and anxiety, the guilt, the sorrow.
I never had time to process the shock of my unexpected diagnosis as it was straight into surgery and chemotherapy and radiation and hormone therapy. It was a whirlwind, but a whirlwind that felt right because I WAS DOING SOMETHING. As the treatment programme ended almost a year later, apart from the hormone medication, I felt unmoored, a little lost. I sought some help at the time but it didn't really hit the spot so I distracted myself with my busy job, parenting my kids and tried to push it out of my mind.
But honestly, I have spent the last decade with enormous anxiety over anything medical, especially related to my chest area. I can bring two examples to mind easily, but there are so many more: the time the ultrasound technician in a follow up suggested I had kidney lesions and I carried my imminent kidney cancer diagnosis with me for days until my oncologist saw the report and rang me and said OMG that's so inaccurate. Then there was that time I really banged up my ribs on a fibreglass rescue board doing my bronze medallion but put off having a chest x-ray until I could barely walk (because, what if they find cancer?)
As I finished work last year, I started to see our family therapist to try and process some of the cancer feelings I had squashed down but were very much sitting there waiting for me. And this therapy is starting to give me some kind of peace, genuine peace.
And this nascent peace is starting to translate into slightly different action. Last year I had argued vigorously with my oncologist about coming off my hormone medication. I was absolutely terrified about losing my safety blanket. She was wonderful about it and made it clear that the choice was always mine but kept returning to the science and the other risks I increased by staying on it. So, a few days before we flew out to India, I stopped taking it. And the panic I expected to feel, well, it never came.
She had suggested that I would feel amazing, being out of chemical menopause, but I'm still assessing that one as I think I'm in perimenopause anyway. But having even a little oestrogen is quite nice. My skin looks like it does after I have a very expensive laser treatment!
I seem to have landed in a place of finally (finally!) being able to drop this heavy stone I've had around my neck for a decade. Will it be forever discarded - who knows? But this is new territory for me and for today, I will enjoy it.
The parts I don't know will ever go away are the guilt and the sometimes sorrow. Every time someone in my circle has a cancer experience worse than mine, I feel guilty. And sad that they maybe don't get to tell a survival story like this one. And I don't know how to process that in any way but to be sad for them.
I have other more vain moments where I feel sorrow. Not often but occasionally - say when I put on a swimsuit and my choice is a flat chest that makes me look like a toddler, or awful prosthetic breast inserts that just look weird and never stay in place.
Why am I telling you this story? Because an intentional life is one where we come to grips with pain and sorrow being just on the other side of joy and happiness. Often we live with both simultaneously. I was reading my favourite book
The Five Invitations this morning and the author Frank Ostaseski wrote of his fears around a heart operation, and his later discussion with a Tibetan monk who had had heart problems. The monk said something like - I am so glad I have a heart. And if I have a heart, there are bound to be some problems.
