Why can't you be the Miracle?

Ye of little faith, shame on you. Still don't believe in miracles? Look around you. Have you noticed a rose bush in bloom? The sun rise and set? The taste of a garden tomato or the power of art?  Or ever fallen in love?

All are holy experiences but look at the miracle of life itself, and you must also examine the miracle of death.

Once a person survives cancer or any other serious disease they learn how to live in the present, and the concept of mortality becomes transparent.  When I was diagnosed in 2000 I felt like a truck had rolled over me.  You see, other people got cancer.  Not my parents or my siblings and I was still so young.

Cancer isn't one disease, however, but 100 different ones that can attack any cell in our bodies. Head, neck, tonsils, heart, colon, breast, bones, blood, vagina, lungs, liver, cervix, uterus, prostate, pancreas, brain, ovaries, skin, etc., etc., and… my little joy… cancer of the anus and rectum.  (Treatment preserved my body parts; others are not always so lucky.)

Oh I can swear like a sailor, (my sailor dad's expression, although he was referring to my mother), but before my diagnosis I cannot imagine that the words, 'anus' or 'rectum', would ever have left my lips. I had an ugly disease in an ugly part of the body and I felt humiliated.  There was a lot of growth I would undergo until I accepted everyone has a body.

Well-meaning friends asking, "So how are you?" made me want to pull the covers back up over my head. How in heaven's name did I know?  I was sad and and brave and angry and afraid and confused.   The first one to have a baby, the first one to breast feed, the first one to start my own company, and the first one to get cancer.

"You're a fighter. If anyone can live through this, it will be you," my mother said.  It would be an understatement to say we were estranged.  A week later she called to tell me she had been scoped, and not to worry about her. She didn't have cancer. What could I say? I told her I was happy for her.  Sadly, I never spoke to her again, as she died unexpectedly while I was still recovering.

None of my doctors (with cancer you have a team) said curable or even incurable.  They used the word 'survival' often.

My doctor told me, "Oh you'll probably make it.  You have Blue Cross, the gold standard of insurance."  Somehow that made me feel terribly relieved, guilty and  sad for all the other people who didn't have my good luck.

Of course we read everything we could get our hands on, and thus scared the heck out of ourselves with those "percentages" on the Internet.  The funny part, in retrospect, was that my cancer was not the one we were reading about.  It takes a while to process all the information and learn different colorectal cancers have different kinds of cells, and so the early 'facts' we gleaned had nothing to do with my treatment or disease.

Until I finally asked somebody, I wondered for two years why nobody was checking my liver.  It turned out that my particular cancer cell type (if it had metasticized) would have first gone to the lungs and from there to the brain.  Luckily mine hadn't taken that leap.

71% survival rate after five years.  That is still my lucky number.  I'm usually a half-full kind of gal, but I was haunted by the 29% half-empty concept. That included all the cancers of all stages, my husband reminded me, but feelings overwhelm you before, during and after treatment.  There is no way to explain how often you feel like,  there I was minding my own business and somebody pushed me out of the plane without a parachute.

Of course I had the nagging fear that my original misdiagnosis over the first  year and a half of symptoms had pushed me past that 'early diagnosis, early treatment' stage.  Fortunately, I no longer feel persecuted, as I have yet to meet a cancer survivor who wasn't misdiagnosed for the first year or even two.  Here is where personal vigilance comes into play.

For example, Hodgkins' disease?  A 34-year-old friend suffered from intense itching for a year and the dermatologist completely blew it.  She was stage 4 out of 4 when they diagnosed her correctly.  Amazingly, she is still here 12 years later thanks to modern science.  But if you think about how often people itch? It could be chicken pox, excema, psorriasis, allergies, dermatitis or scabies.  Who'd leap right to Hodgkins?

My other friend's leukemia was diagnosed mere weeks before it required a stem cell transplant.  Her main symptom had been a nagging fatigue.  Her doctor had neglected to ask her any questions or get simple annual blood draws until she was very close to death.  In his defense?  She never admitted to herself that she felt sick or tired as she had never been sick before.  How could he read her mind?

And then my cousin, whose gynecologist told her the lump under her arm was a sweat gland?  Massachusetts General Hospital corrected that diagnosis a few weeks later; it was breast cancer.  She also survived.

I guess the point of these last few paragraphs is to remember that like you know your kid, your sister or your dog, you also know your own body better than anyone else.

Don't be intimidated by a doctor like mine who sarcastically said, "How many second opinions do you need for a hemorrhoid?"  Fortunately, I thought I needed one from a gastroenterologist.  

Oh it certainly is not all bleak.  One lucky thing about a cancer diagnosis is the value you learn to place on the present.  You listen to people, you have them over, you make great new, deeper friends.  I've also described before cancer as living all your life with tinted solar paper on all your windows and then one day someone pulls it off.  Everything is so clear and concise and so beautiful.

You kiss your children; up-date the will; write e-mails to people you think about and love but rarely see; upgrade your volunteer efforts until they are ultra meaningful; take up sculpting and finally organize that cookbook with only the amazing family recipes.

You also get to grade your earthly appearance - that one can burn if you've been self-centered - but you have time to make some needed adjustments and gratitude becomes your mantra.

The medical technology is fantastic but if you want the cancer cells to die, the treatments for many can be prolonged and radical.  The secret, though, is to live long enough so that when they come up with the next treatment you're around to receive it.  It could be 'the Cure'.

And a little advice?  Tell your doctors why you want to live so that they won't think you can't handle it.  Studies have shown that women, particularly, often do not receive the complete treatment protocol because their doctors believe they cannot 'tolerate' the regimen.  It's not voluntary or something you ponder.

Don't be afraid, just do it.  They are going to almost kill you, because that is the only way they can be sure they killed the cancer cells.  Surrender and then survive.

So why after treatment am I talking about miracles? Some of us are resurrected from the dead and after eight years I believe I still have a purpose.  Today it is just to encourage you to find out the recommendations for cancer screening at your age.  Post them somewhere and follow up.  Life is much too wonderful to get distracted from taking care of yourself.  Other people need us, of course, but if we are not strong ourselves, what good are we to them?

Oh, and by the way, as a favor to me, if you have one of the risk factors listed below, please get scoped:

Risk factors for colorectal cancer:

1) Over 50

2) History of familial polyps (or colorectal cancer) in the immediate family

3) Rectal bleeding

4) Lower abdominal cramping or pain

5) Constipation alternating with diarrhea

Take good care of yourself, okay?

This is a repost from 2007, as I believe many women do not get proper colorectal treatment screening and am a bit of a crusader.  Also, in addition to the polyps doctors removed in the past, there are also flat areas that need to be removed that are now considered pre-cancerous, so make sure your doctor is up-to-date on the latest recommended procedures.

And ladies?  These cancers are equal opportunity killers and develop in men and women at approximately the same ages.  If your doctor suggested your husband be screened, but has not mentioned it to you?  Find another doctor.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation circulating, so make an appointment with a doctor you trust and ask about screening.  Remember, there are people who love you and want you around for a long, long time.

Here is a link to the American Cancer Society which outlines some general cancer screening recommendations: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_2_3X_ACS_Cancer_Detection_Guidelines_36.asp