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The other side of illness

by Sharon Dziurda

There are as many ways to experience cancer as there are people.  I don’t propose to share my path to be an inspiration to you or to offer a direction for anyone.  Although cancer survivors appear to have some shared awareness, I have learned that each journey through the cancer experience is unique, as it is a journey into the self.

My own journey began with a long drop down from the illusion of invincibility.  I never smoked, was not much for alcohol and there was never any history of breast cancer in my family, so I never even considered the possibility of being the first woman in my family on either side to develop breast cancer. 

But I certainly could run myself ragged:  a fast-tracked career woman, wife, mother, home and garden enthusiast!  I was a control freak (which causes anxiety in oneself—and others) an overachiever, and not one to be outdone.  There is a theory that people who are always late, overscheduled, and over-involved are really running from death.  That was me. The premise is that the grim reaper will have a harder time hitting a moving target.  Well, he doesn’t.

Being that tightly wound can create a level of stress that comes to feel normal.  And if this state of living at the speed of light doesn’t cause cancer, it certainly doesn’t leave one’s heart, soul, mind, and soma open to the things that can nurture them.  It’s not to say I didn’t have an interesting life.  I just think the rate at which I was living it made me somewhat of a spectator to my own experience.  Ban Breathnach said it best in her book Simple Abundance:  “hurtling through real life as if it were an out-of-body experience.”

Then I was stopped—like a bullet hitting a lead wall.  Being diagnosed with breast cancer really can put one in the moment.  But, I believe it was God’s plan for me to slow down.  I think previously, I may not have been ‘open’ to the message; therefore, more drastic measures came into play.  And for a person who is at home with the illusion of control, slowing down can be very uncomfortable.

It was not a good time to get cancer.  I had lost my job.  In fact, there were many things about the past ten years that had become less than perfect—messy marriage, messier divorce, single parenting, financial pressures, financial risk, failed business venture, crooked business partner, rotten romantic life.  My life was catching up with me. 

I have to say I cried and was inconsolable with sadness for several weeks following the news.  The depth of my sadness stemmed from the realization that I would deeply miss my daughter and my regret at the possibility of leaving her at a time when she needed me, and I so much wanted to be with her.  Other relationships were affected.  People I didn’t know, or hadn’t heard from in ages, ‘crawled out of the woodwork’ and were there to help me in large measures.  Conversely, there were those I knew would stand by me in any circumstance, who, ‘disappeared into the woodwork’. 

I did not feel sorry for myself.  And, I never wondered, “Why me?”  This is not to say I didn’t have my share of anger, but I never felt abandoned by God.  I always felt that God carried me.  And, at times, there really were only one set of prints in the sand.  I don’t know why, but I always felt blessed or luckier than most—even when struggling through surgeries to take parts out or put them in or chemo or radiation.  Oddly, when I look back on the whole of the experience, I think of it less as a time of illness and more as a time of revelation and miracles.

Then, a year after the initial diagnosis, while undergoing a course of radiation treatment, I was diagnosed with stage two—on my birthday.  Because the area in question could not be biopsied, the oncologist said he had requested two other opinions.  One concurred with the metastatic diagnosis, but he was still waiting on the other, from a highly regarded radiologist from out of state.  My daughter was baking a cake at the neighbor’s as a surprise for me while I was at the appointment.  I remember praying and bargaining with God the whole drive home and when I ducked into my house to wash the tears away before going next door to smile and blow out the candles, I quickly checked the message machine.  I ask you …What were the chances?  The caller identified himself as an associate of the radiologist providing the final opinion.  He said it was no promise, but they didn’t think the x-ray was showing metastasis.  I decided to believe him, even though doctors continued to clash over the diagnosis for years. 

For many, the event of a life threatening illness or experience is a catalyst to connect with one’s spirituality.  In my case, God preceded cancer…just lucky I guess.  I’m sure it would have been a more tumultuous journey out there in the storm alone. I might add that in my younger years I had been a staunch and rather eloquent atheist who singlehandedly took on debating small clusters of Jehovah Witnesses and Baptists for sport.  A great one for proof, as the years progressed, I found my self somewhere where proof had no place: faith.  God was something I began to feel as an ongoing presence in my life, something I could neither explain nor deny, and I excused myself from having to do either.  Belief in God was, in essence, a personal indulgence, a gift I gave myself.  It went against every paradigm I held dear…and yet, I felt so comfortable with it.

And though I felt God’s arms around me right from the start of the journey, the hardest part had been telling my nine-year-old.  She understood enough about the C word to know that it had a connection with death. Knowing I was a year late getting my mammogram, I felt deep sadness and disappointment in my sense of responsibility to my child.  It was interesting to observe her efforts to make sense of my going for treatment (chemo) and coming home worse than when I left.  She would lie on my bed with me and we would play with her home-constructed board game: Cancer.  Select a Cancer Card and “Move two spaces forward…just because you feel like it”; or, “Take ten steps back...you don’t know why”. 

We did our best with this time of waiting.  Who lives? Who dies?  Why?  These questions loomed over us like B-52 bombers.  Women with no node involvement: gone in months.  Others with the same type of cancer and a dozen positive nodes removed: here for years.  Cancer is an unpredictable condition with a lot of variables in play.  I think there certainly are some generalities about the disease that influence survival: general health, confidence in one’s practitioners, receptiveness to treatment, purpose, and hope.  And the least of these is not hope.   Even though sometimes healing from the disease may mean moving to the next level through death, each of us is entitled to map and travel our own journey and to hold on to hope no matter the odds in reaching our destination.

I cannot summarize how cancer has changed me.  My journey continues. I can tell you that my circuits are still a bit overloaded from all I had to absorb.  Re-entry has been a little disorienting.  Coming out of cancer is akin to being put off the train suddenly in an unfamiliar place.   And that unfamiliar place is me.  I am different from before the disease, mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically.  And, what worked before doesn’t work now.  The station stop finds me just coming out of the ‘culture of illness’—the state of being sickly that develops a life of its own.  In my case, it was as a result of being immersed in stage two disease, 12 surgeries, chemo and radiation, and the full compliment of side affects including lymphodema, fibromyalgia, migraines, and hair loss.  Which is great for the legs, plus I found out my head shape is really nice…nicer than Demi Moore’s.  It was very liberating not having to deal with hair issues.  You can’t have a bad hair day when you don’t have hair—just rinse your head and go!  Although, the look would have come off so much better if I had had eyebrows.  And even though it is an older and less attractive skin, I am now more comfortable in my own skin.  I am open to learning about the next me. 

I value myself more, am more tender with myself and more accepting of my frailties.  Things like missing eyebrows found their quiet place in the larger scheme of things. After moving beyond the self alienation that was initiated by the sense of being betrayed by my own body, I have developed a more intimate relationship with my self.  I have come to realize that I too broke quite a few promises to my body regarding nutrition, rest and stress. We are now in the making up and negotiating phase where we are setting new ground rules, and I am searching to find alternatives to that which I feel I have lost. That relationship includes getting in touch with the things that renew me make and my spirit soar. One of these is horses.

Horses are my conduit to the earth’s energy.  It’s a different passion for everyone: music, gardening, golf, cooking.  I believe tapping that energy through your passion is vital to living…for however long.  I was away from horses for awhile before I became ill.  Chance brought me into a relationship with a horse following my cancer that challenged my perception of myself and made me take a second look at who I thought I was.  For the last four years I have reared a Dutch Warmblood Stallion from a yearling.  He is now 18 hands and 1400 pounds.  If you know anything about horses, you understand that in a herd of horses, leadership and doubt do not reside in tandem.  Horses are prey animals, and being dinner, they are evolutionarily programmed to follow a confident leader to safety.   If you have observed a school of fish or a herd of wildebeest move as one, you know there are no maps being distributed prior to take-off, yet all are in sync through curves and turns.  The members of these collectives react through an acute ability to instantly pick up and respond to energy and subtle cues.  So, if you lack confidence, a horse will know it immediately, even if you, or your human companions, don’t. 

Well, I did, and he knew.  And, when my stallion hit his ‘terrible twos’, he wasn’t a baby anymore, but a herd animal gaining confidence and size, and at 16 hands and 1000 pounds, he wasn’t about to follow a leader with a hollow scepter.  I didn’t know how badly the disease shook my confidence.  But he knew.  And regaining the role of leader required me to dig deeply to access the real thing.  You can’t fake it with a horse.  They respond to signals that come from a much deeper level.  I can assure you it has little to do with physical strength.  My horse has been my faithful friend and partner on a healing journey that has gone beyond the body to the core—one that helped me understand that the definition of health encompasses more than the absence of illness in the body.  I know no matter how badly I feel physically, when I am standing next to him—even in the mud with sleet coming down—I feel good. This year at age 53, I will begin his training under saddle.  And I am not a horse trainer; but I do have the good sense to be guided by one.

I would like to tell you that as a result of this experience all of my priorities have fallen in order, I am never dissatisfied, and things is my life run much smoother.  But that wouldn’t be the truth.   The good news is: as a direct result of experiencing a life threatening illness, I have developed a strong awareness of what is really important in my life.  Before, it was clouded.  Now, it’s clear.  The bad news is I don’t always honor those priorities and allow them to guide my choices.  I mess up sometimes, occasionally still run things to the wire, push the limits, and take risks.  But, in a sense, that is also the good news, because things are getting back to normal.  Only now, there is an abiding sense of gratitude that has taken up residence within me, and a deeper appreciation of each day.