Yesterday I wrote this little thing and posted it to Notes on Substack. It went a little something like this:
In the last year, I have:
had two cancer surgeries
lost 40 pounds (see above)
quit teaching
started a new career, in a new field
published my third book
quit drinking
wondered many times if the cancer would kill me
really, seriously stopped giving a shit about a lot of things that don’t matter
became a much, much happier person
became a kinder person
“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is bullshit, but going through the hard things does offer perspective.
After posting it I started to go back and change the last line. I wanted to say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you kinder if you let it, but by then people were commenting, and it seemed wrong to change it.
Then someone responded with that line: Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you kinder.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Maybe it doesn’t make everyone kinder. Maybe some people see death and become an even bigger asshole.
But I think it does for most of us. I think suffering changes us, I think pain changes us, I think facing death changes us. The kindest people I know are the ones who have gone through the most shit, because they understand how hard it is. They’re able to offer empathy. Understanding. They know sometimes they just need to be there for you. (For me that person is my partner, Jennifer, who has been taking care of me the last few days, and who took care of me the first time I had this damn surgery.)
A few people responded to my post to tell me their stories of surviving cancer and car wrecks. These stories touched me. They let me know I wasn’t alone, that other people were feeling the same things and coming to the same conclusions, about cancer, and kindess.
So I’d like to ask all of you about times you’ve survived. Doesn’t have to be death. Doesn’t have to be major surgery. Tell me about a successful career change. Tell me about moving cross-country. Tell what you learned, how you became a better person. Tell me how you’re incorporating this better-ness into your everyday life.
Tell me about cancer. Surgery. Brushes with death. Tell me about actual death. About losing someone you still can’t believe is gone, someone you still talk to everyday, someone who still lives inside you and gives you guidance (my gandparents were the two greatest people I knew, and I miss them daily, though my grandfather has been gone over 20 years, and my grandmother almost 8).
Tell me how you’ve reinvented yourself. Tell me what you’ve cut loose in your life to make room for more, for better. Tell me the type of person you could be if you could just get past all the bullshit.
Tell me about giving something up: drinking for me, because it was a destructive force in my life. I’m convinced my two kidney cancers were because of drinking, of running alcohol through my filtering system for far too many years. Tell me, like me, how much fucking better your life became once you gave up the sauce. Because it did. When I was drinking I could never have imagined how much happiness not drinking would bring me. I could never have become kinder while swimming at the bottom of a bottle.
Tell me how you became happier. Or are trying to. Tell me how you became kinder. How can we help? How can we encourage?
I’m on Day 5 of recovering from cancer surgery, and still in pain. I’m still a little dark when I wake in the morning after the painkillers have worn off and realize I still have to struggle through the day (it’s getting better though). Tell me stories that give me strength. Show me the unbelievable strength we all have when we help each other.
I was dx with colon cancer in 2017. I was lucky, as it was stage 2 when it was discovered. I had abdominal surgery (colon resection), and then everything changed. Though I have been a writer forever, and had already published 6 books traditionally, I wrote & sold a memoir - not about cancer per se, but about how cancer forced me to look at unresolved griefs from my past. I felt like I might never get another chance to do the work of forgiveness and of writing what I really wanted to say, and so I did. And when that book came out, everything changed again. I started drawing again, like I did as a kid, and I wrote & illustrated a book. This month, I'm retiring after 25 years of teaching in higher ed. I feel grateful and lucky every day (even if every day isn't sunshine and unicorns..) ;-) I realize more deeply how we have this one life, this one time, and discernment has become significantly easier. I have given up small talk and meetings and buzz words. I've given up grudges. I've given up the belief that I would never die.
Thank you for sharing your journey. I hope the healing continues and you have many many more years of kindness.
Breast cancer was for other people. Strangers. Distant cousins. A friend of a friend. I clocked in my yearly mammograms and had been relatively healthy my entire life. Cancer was for other people. Not me.
It was December 2018 and I was in a small room finishing getting dressed after yet another yearly mammogram. The nurse was standing outside the door waiting for me. They want to have a closer look, so let’s go into this exam room. The world instantly shifted, and it was like a curtain closed inside my head. I instantly knew. I wasn’t particularly a pessimist or one to go full panic at the drop of the hat. But in that moment, I knew.
Fast forward a blur of a week of tests and biopsies. I got the call the afternoon of December 23, 2018. Stage 1 breast cancer in my left breast and troubling pathology in the right one. They said it’s good we caught it early. They went over my options. I chose nipple-sparing double mastectomy. I sat with a plastic surgeon who showed me all the ways to save my dignity as a woman. It would be a 12-18 month process post mastectomy of stretching my skin so that they could eventually insert implants. I’d get to keep my nipples if I wanted. I was amazed and my husband tried to convince me I’d end up with the tits of my dreams. The thing was I was already enamored with the ones I had. But they had betrayed me and they had to go.
March 2018 they cut out my breasts and the cancer along with them. I would not require chemo or radiation because it hasn’t spread into my lymph nodes yet. I was supposed to be happy. Grateful. Instead I left the hospital bitter and in immense pain despite the drugs. I had drain tubes sticking out of my flesh on both sides and I couldn’t lift my arms for six weeks. I couldn’t wipe my own ass. Completely helpless. I fucking hated that. I felt like a captured animal. I was so angry. I didn’t understand why. No one understood me—so I thought.
I wasn’t healing like I should have. I got an infection and had to go in for two more surgeries. My husband hid in the garage with a bottle. I ran my mother-in-law out of the house in tears back to Missouri. I was pissed at the world.
I was in the shower one afternoon. They had told me not to scrub my chest; just let water run down. It is so vivid in my mind looking down at my blackened right wound where my breast had once been, my own blackened nipple still there, hanging on for dear life. And then just like that, it popped off and fell onto the shower floor, just laying there in the water rivulets. I stood there for I don’t know how long looking down at it. A crucial piece of what I felt identified me sexually and as a woman was now a dead piece a shriveled flesh at my feet. I leaned over, picked it up, examined it. No emotion. Until I realized I was screaming and crumpled on the floor with that fucking nipple clasped in my fist. NOOOOO. It was like a movie scene in my head of Brandon coming in and pulling me out of the shower into his arms while I screamed and howled.
Somehow keeping my nipples and eventually having implants was supposed to make all this be ok. But I had lost. I lost my boobs. I lost my mind. I lost my husband. Yes. All the above. I became a person no one could stand to be around. I thought I’d be able to handle cancer with dignity, but my vanity wouldn’t allow it. I hated everyone and everything. I left my husband, took out a 6- month lease on a place, and then moved back home 2 weeks later. We fought constantly. It was so ugly. He drank and I raged.
The next months eventually led to me filing for divorce. I also underwent 7 more revision surgeries and a total hysterectomy. The hits just would not stop. Those were the absolute worst days of my life. I gained weight. My oncology surgeon scolded me. I’d gotten a 2nd chance at life. A lot of people aren’t as lucky as I was, he’d told me. Lucky. I’d been lucky.
***
It’s now five years later. I’m cancer free. I have D cup implants with one real nipple and one fake one made from my own abdominal skin. They look fine. I have no feeling in them or for them. I wished I’d done it differently now. I wish I’d done a lot differently. My husband and I found our way back to each other. I am so grateful for that. I am now grateful for not having cancer. I can’t say I beat cancer because it beat the absolute hell out of me. But I learned a lot about myself and what is truly important. I am different. What did not kill me DID eventually make me kinder. Am I stronger? I don’t know. I’m definitely wiser and more patient. More compassionate.
To you Paul. Don’t give up. We can have regrets of our past choices, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s what we do going forward. Don’t be a dick like I was. I wasn’t prepared for the mental job it did on me. Keep your head. Much love to you.