Survivorship Revisited
Dr Sacchini had just reviewed my latest mammogram results at Sloan-Kettering. My remaining breast was healthy, and the opposite side showed no sign of metastasis. It had been 3 1/2 years since we first met and he became my breast cancer surgeon. His soft demeanor and hands had been so comforting to me, and his words today were uttered in the same gracious tone.
"You will not be seeing me again, Lynne, since you are now graduated to the survivor class of patients. You need not come back for one year, and you will be seen by nurse-practitioners who will monitor you. Of course, if anything bad happens, I will once again be there for you."
I had a mixture of feelings. Survivor? Not being under his careful oversight again? I can wait for an entire year to be rechecked? Good news, certainly, but news of graduating into the survivor class did not make me feel more comforted.
I knew that most breast cancer metastases occur between Year 3 and Year 5 after diagnosis. What he was telling me was that statistically I was out of danger for cancer to occur in the other breast. But I still had to be followed by my oncologist, Dr. Graham, on a more frequent schedule until we could breathe a marginal sigh of relief in November, 2015.
In INTEGRAL HEALING, coming out in October 2014, I report how I have struggled with that term 'cancer survivor". Ever since I heard the quip that no one is a cancer survivor until they die of something else, I've taken offense at the term. Overly optimistic, I thought. Not really helpful for a 68 year old woman where the odds are against me about recurrence. Don't get me relaxed and happy unless you can swear I won't confront cancer anywhere else, ever.
Yet the American Cancer Society offered me a different perspective. The word means "to live beyond", "to outlive." So do I take the oncologist's time limitation and only see myself surviving after three or five or ten years? Or do I live every day past my surgery as having lived beyond, having outlived. What a breath of optimism that has given me! I charge into today and tomorrow now. I "lean into" them. I banish the "what ifs" since I am already a survivor. Now, leave me alone to live the rest of my life.
As the term is defined on-line, a survivor is:
a person who survives, especially a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died.
"the sole survivor of the massacre"
- the remainder of a group of people or things."a survivor from last year's team"
- a person who copes well with difficulties in their life."she is a born survivor"
"A person who copes well with difficulties in their life." It is this vision that the ACS offers to me. I don't need to wait three or five or twenty years to determine if I am a survivor of my cancer struggles. I need only cope well with the difficulties I had during them.
That brought me to thinking about Zak Stein's issue with books in general. In his excellent commentary in INTEGRAL REVIEW, March 2014, Vol. 10, No. 1, he takes issue with books as a fundamentally flawed educational technology:
"Books are too authoritative, for one. There is no arguing with a book, let alone having it explain something some other way.... They are not good teachers because they simply tell you how it is. Even the best book cannot clarify itself...."
Here I sit, having finished writing and revising my book last winter, and I am already arguing with it/myself as I see my construction of my own story change. My interpretation of my life/spiritual/medical journeys is also frozen into "time quanta". My term denotes that my writing a sentence freezes my thoughts and worldview at that particular moment. It is true at that instant. But just as a river flows, and one cannot step again into the same stream, so another tick of an instant can change my perspective.
"A person who copes well with difficulties in their life."
That is what I wish for all those challenged by health issues, and what I wish for myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment