She called on Friday night with the results. I recall her explaining that the lump would have to be taken out and biopsied and that I would have to find a surgeon. Someplace in my gut I screamed, “I can’t find a surgeon, I can’t do anything; I have cancer. I am going to die. I have a one-year-old daughter, and she won’t even remember me.” It was a thought too crushing to sustain for more than an instant.
I moved through the house like an image from a carnival fun house. My head went first, followed by a body that seemed to undulate from the shoulders down. My body had turned on me. It was trying to kill me.
What followed for me was five months that included surgery and chemotherapy and seven years that have included an indescribable journey into myself and out again.
Like all breast cancer patients, I’ll never know the critical moment when some aberrant cell in my body decided to go haywire and begin multiplying. What I do acknowledge are factors that I believe led to my cancer. They are unique to my history and not meant to be a guideline for any other women.
But like most other women I have talked to, I needed to decide why I got breast cancer in order to better cope with it and to accept that these factors could affect my daughter’s risk of breast cancer.
At 36 I became a first-time mother to a three-pound, one-ounce premature infant who didn’t sleep for six hours straight until she was three months old. My diet after Kirtley’s birth became more erratic at a time when I should have been building my immune system. I was emotionally and physically spent. My estrogen level had been up and down, and I was already at high risk by having had my first child after age 35.
In October 1991, almost five years to the day after my diagnosis, my mother was diagnosed, and I learned I had another high-risk factor—family history.
In addition, while information concerning birth control pills and breast cancer is contradictory at best, new studies point to those of us who took the pill in the late 1960s, when the dosage was four to five times what women take today. We took them early in our childbearing years for extended periods, and new studies (some of which are refuted by other studies) indicate that combination could result in a risk five times greater than normal for developing breast cancer.
I consider myself an open person, but the possibility that unexpressed anger was causing stress prompted me to be much more open about my feelings (my husband, Tom, says I am succeeding).
Lest I sound like one who has bought entirely the idea that I caused my cancer, I also blame our environment and the endless combinations of carcinogens to which we are exposed growing up in the 20th century. I remember clearly my pesticide-covered neighborhood—free of mosquitoes, but covered with a fine mist of chemicals twice a week. What effect, I wonder, did the twice-weekly DDT spraying have on my health? How many other carcinogens played a part in my cancer I will never know, but in spring 1992, studies showed that the breast tissue of women who had breast cancer showed much higher levels of PCBs found in pesticides! How I can protect my daughter from the possibility of breast cancer in light of all the questions for which there are no answers is another set of issues.
Physically, I have recovered well from breast cancer. After undergoing a modified radical mastectomy in October 1986, I underwent six rounds of chemotherapy due to one malignant lymph node.
The chemotherapy experience can only be described as the most difficult thing I have ever experienced.
I also know I would do it again in a minute after researching this issue for more than two years (and the introduction in 1990 of the anti-nausea drug Zofran, which has eliminated nausea for a significant percent of women). I have also talked to women who lost only part of their hair and bounced back well. It isn’t easy watching your hair accumulate in the drain, but it is easier than watching your baby toddle toward you knowing you aren’t doing everything possible to ensure you will be around to rear her.
In 1981 I had a back-flap breast reconstruction. My back muscle was moved to my chest wall, along with a wedge of skin, and a silicone implant was placed underneath it. The nipple was formed with skin from my upper thigh and then tattooed to match the existing nipple. The left breast was lifted to match the newly constructed breast. No, I don’t look the same. I have a long scar down my back, and the scars on my reconstructed breast are still a little pink. But I can move my new breast, and I am gradually regaining feeling in the armpit and surrounding areas. And with the changes on the left breast, my chest looks like it did when I was 18: firm and straight ahead!
While I am constantly amazed at the physical result of reconstruction, I was totally unprepared for the enormous emotional change that occurred after reconstruction. In a way, I am whole again physically. When I’m dressed in bathing suits and nightgowns, no one would know I ever had breast cancer.
I wish my soul and psyche were so easily restored. Emotionally, I remain on the roller-coaster ride that is life after breast cancer. On my good days, I praise medical science for the speed and efficiency with which it removed the cancer. I think of myself as a cancer survivor and even find myself grateful for chemotherapy. I can even have a sense of humor about breast cancer from time to time, and on my good days I list the positive changes cancer wrought in my life. My panic attacks are farther apart now, and I no longer lie in bed and cry quietly as I wonder how my daughter will cope with adolescence after I have died.
On my bad days I have a pain that quickly becomes chronic. Sure that I am dying, I call my oncologist. But the bad days are fewer now than last year, which was better than the year before that. I just read one statistic that says it takes us three years to (choose one) get over, assimilate, cope with, recover from, deal with breast cancer. No, I don’t think “get back to normal” is a choice in that sentence. How your life will change as a result of breast cancer is up to you.
I have learned a number of things about myself since discovering I had breast cancer. Before my diagnosis, I was in the middle of the postpartum blues as I tried to decide personal directions. I was irritated with little things. My prayer life consisted of questions such as, Where am I going? What do you want from me? Help me see what is important in life.
Now I know what is important. And while I cannot call my cancer a gift, it certainly clarified my life for me and provided a few truths:
I can live without a breast.
Relationships are not based on breasts.
I have a high pain tolerance.
I don’t like to vomit.
Hair grows back.
Children grow up no matter what.
On a more introspective level, I have accepted that I had cancer, but that fact does not have to ruin or rule my life. I have a lot to live for, and I intend to live for it. I know now that fear can be more painful than surgery. But most of all, I know I now have the personal power to make my own decisions.
Kathy LaTour
Reprinted with permission from Pete Mueller.
Live Your Life
I was severely depressed. I had helped a friend through a traumatic and dangerous situation, and all of my well-intentioned help only seemed to make matters worse. Feeling lost, I sat down on my daughter’s bed in despair. My eye caught a crumpled piece of yellow paper with the attached wisdom:
The past is gone, but Now is Forever. The future does not lie in our hands, but the future lies in the hands of the Present. Go out and grasp the seconds of the day as if you had only that day to live. Experience and enjoy the moments of your life. We only have one life to live, so live it like a champion. Everyone was put here for a purpose, so let that purpose rise up above and show everyone what you’re made of.
I’m not telling you how you should live,but how you should feel when you look back at the memories of a once-upon life of yours. Don’t regret things later. If you feel it is right, do it. It’s your life and nobody else’s. Make decisions that please you. Let nobody put you down. Don’t live in anybody’s shadows or dreams. If you do have a dream, act on it and it will probably come true.
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I was amazed by what I read; the words spoke right to my soul and brought light to my mind. I ran to my daughter and asked her where she had found this piece of writing, thinking that she must have copied it from some magazine. She shyly admitted that she had written it herself. “But you’re only 12!” I exclaimed. “How could you have written this? Where did you learn this from?”
“Don’t you know, Mom?” she replied. “You’ve taught me all this! I just wrote it all down.”
Judy and Katie Griffler
“Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a GIFT. That's why it's called the present.”
Reprinted with special permission of King Features Syndicate.
Twenty Minutes Is a Lifetime . . .
Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires— discrepancies in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time, but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Bernie S. Siegel, M.D.
Fourteen years ago, I was a woman like any other. Married, mother of two children, manager of an optical shop, I led a seemingly normal existence. At 49, I had explored a variety of experiences. Between my extravagances and my traditional values, my concerns and certainties, I struggled to cope with my daughter’s adolescence and my husband’s absences. The common lot, I suppose.
May 1982
A routine checkup
A blurry spot in the eye
A life collapsed by a few frantic cells
A cancerous tumor, 12 millimeters in diameter
In the eye
Doctors call it malignant “melanoma”
Many examinations, only one verdict:
Inoculation or death...
Without appeal...
In an instant, I tumbled from the world of healthy people into the world of the ill. The beatings of my heart became the beatings in my head. When I shut my eyes, I saw the concerned faces of doctors, my ears resounding with their judgments. I couldn’t believe that I was going to survive. I felt as if I had been erased from life.
I was disturbed, suspecting that perhaps my illness had deeper psychological aspects. Unconsciously, facing death brought me back to another pain, one inherited from a Jewish childhood invaded by Nazi occupation. Born in 1933 in Paris (the same year Hitler came to power), my early memories revolved around hiding, fear and shame, hungry for food, hungry for love and having no rights. The pain of my disease uncovered a whole series of anguishes, the depth of which I had barely suspected.
In looking at my life prior to the diagnosis, I noticed other points of stress and conflict. My daughter, Lara, was having her adolescent crisis. Suddenly, I no longer had the right hair, nor the right words—and certainly not the right attitude. My husband’s business kept him abroad, and I felt my life unraveling around me. In this chaos, my cancer brought unexpected responses to unfulfilled vital needs. My daughter’s crisis ended immediately and my husband stopped traveling! Little by little, I realized that in my life, disease had often played a crucial role, an anchor amidst my insecurities. It enabled me to hook onto other people, to induce their concern and make them caress me, “tender” me, tell me “I love you.”
I had been running after love all my life, and yet I began realizing that the source of love was within me. In my darkest moments, my family’s faith was the rock I clung to. Although there was little reason for hope, they made that hope an absolute priority in our lives and never let their fears undermine it. Beneath the threat of cancer, we came together as a family, rediscovering each other as we searched a path of health. There was my son, Noah, nine years old. School did not interest him very much, but one day he was going to receive his high school diploma. That, I wanted to see! And Lara, my daughter, so radiant, so ravishing....
I felt cornered by the impenetrable wall of cancer, but I realized there must be another side. More than ever, I wanted to go there. I was simultaneously told, “You’re going to die in a few months,” and “Think positively.” It wasn’t possible for me. I was too afraid. I was unable to shift from “you’re going to die” to “you’re going to heal.” Whenever I thought about my future, the terror overwhelmed me. I woke up every morning shaking with fear: “I’m going to die in the next 20 minutes!” Until the day I was fed up: “Okay, you are going to die in the next 20 minutes... so what!? So what are you going to do in those 20 minutes?” This “so what” got me to face the essential questions, not as an intellectual exercise but as an experience.
I also met Dr. Carl Simonton, who helped me change from “you cannot heal, you will die” to “you can die”—not “you will die,” but “you can.” He recentered me on my goals, not my fears. That was an extraordinary shift. I became active in my healing and stepped out of the ghetto of disease, reentering the vitality of life, finding the courage to tell myself: “I can, I can, I can....”
The more I chose what I wanted for myself and others, the more a great life force stirred within me. I learned to trust the idea that “you can heal and what you do today makes a significant difference.” Acting upon this belief was my first step on the path of healthy thinking—what a discovery, not just for my cancer, but for my entire life.
Feeling impelled to tell healthy people that they don’t need to wait for a disease or a very serious event in order to transform their lives, my husband and I started sharing our experience and eventually founded an international institute called Au Coeur de la Communication (At the Heart of Communication). Dedicated to creating healthy communication between individuals, families and communities, this process of supporting and sharing with other people, and gradually designing educational programs, propelled me back into the world of human beings, leaving behind an atmosphere completely dominated by my cancer. This was an essential starting point for me. As I widened my vision upon others and the world, I sensed that it infused my body with vital strength and energy. I cherished more and more the present moment. Each morning found me still alive, the days turning into months. Deftly, quietly, cell by cell, my energy, the quality of my life came back.
My journey with cancer taught me to question my certainties. The most difficult part to overcome was my own unhealthy beliefs about life, death and disease.
I learned that I could make each moment essential, choosing to reenter the flow of life, abandoning an addiction, reconciling a misunderstanding, rekindling a relationship. Now, Au Coeur de la Communication explores this through programs in the fields of health, education, business and intercultural dialogue. How can we as individuals make a difference in our families, our health, our organizations and in the world?
I’ve rediscovered life—my “response ability” in it, for it. For all this, I can now fondly say, “My dear cancer!”
Claire Nuer
Finding My Passion
There is in the worst of fortunes the best of chances for a happy change.
Euripides
I know a lot about passion because in the process of living, I lost it, but in the process of dying, I found it again.
My life was about three things: pleasing, proving and achieving. I thought that if enough people liked me, I would feel better about being me. I wanted desperately to please everyone... family, bosses, neighbors, people I didn’t like. It hardly mattered who they were; other people’s approval and validation were the source of my self-esteem. “Looking good” was my daily regime, and I was incredibly good at it. I continually quested for greater and greater accomplishments because those proved my value to the outside world.
This thinking affected the entire fabric of my life. My work was a series of long hours, proving my dedication and making sure I never offended anyone. I made impossible promises that were hard to keep because I was afraid to say no, which added untold amounts of stress. By constantly reacting to outside circumstances rather than taking charge of my life, I felt victimized and I lived in fear that “they”—whoever “they” were—would suddenly discover I was incompetent. The fact that I was the youngest woman in my company to hold an
executive position and became director of corporate communications while still in my mid-20s did not assuage my concern. Nothing soothed my self-doubt.
The only solution I knew was to try harder, work longer, achieve more. I just knew I’d be happy when I did the right thing. I left the corporate world knowing that being independent would change everything. Ironically, I became a career consultant and taught people how to look good and be aware of what others expected of them. I knew all about that.
Of course, I was still a people-pleaser and took lower fees because I feared no one would use my services. Instead of being driven by the demands of a boss, I was driven by the demands of my clients. I couldn’t understand why I was financially struggling and assumed the answer was to simply make more money. So the cycle escalated as I decided to increase my marketing and promotion efforts even more. When I burned out and grew discontented with no improvement in my income, I decided there was something intrinsically wrong with me and embarked on a campaign to fix it. I went to classes, lost weight and joined personal-growth groups. I was still empty.
So it went...my life of pleasing, proving and achieving. What did it get me? Tired. Broke. Emotionally depleted. And terribly afraid.
Then in 1986, the awakening came. I discovered I had bladder cancer and the prognosis looked bleak because my symptoms could be traced back for three years. My doctor had the bedside manner of a blacksmith and was not gently encouraging. In my first surgery, he removed the largest tumor he had ever taken from a bladder and announced we would be doing another surgery in 10 to 12 weeks “to see what was left.” This is a fun guy.