When I heard the Doctor say that word with my name attached the first time, my only thought was how could this happen to me ? I am a young person with lots of life ahead I can’t have Cancer ! But I did and after coming to terms with it and plotting a course for ridding myself of it I moved on. I wish I could say that the cancer had done the same.
Round two. Different places but the same faces. This time more invasive and requiring a more invasive and aggressive approach. I have battled the big C and have the scars to prove it. How many fall in our lives to this enemy that we can’t see until it feels too late. How many times can we put on that little black dress and tote that lacey hanky to the church before we begin to think that to have Cancer is to never be rid of it in your life. It spreads to your loved ones and takes them when you refuse to go. You hear the words coming from the other end of the phone “ the doctor says it is cancer” and you wonder ‘would they be spared if I had not cheated Cancer out of his victim the first time?’
Then reason takes over and you know that you are not the cause of another’s fight with this nemesis. But you will be forced to standby helpless and watch as they battle for themselves this mutation and betrayal of one’s own body.
Perhaps that is the worst part. To be betrayed by one’s own cells and in the most private of places. Parts that, in our minds we believe define our gender, or make us who we are, parts that no one is supposed to think about when thinking about us as a person. But like it or not, we need people to know that we need then right now, their thoughts and prayers and love and acceptance of who we are about to become. Someone who has survived the fight. Someone who although we might be missing a part or two those parts did not define us, they were not the whole of who we are. The spirit and will and cannot become infected or altered unless we choose to let them. We are not defined by our body parts but by our whole selves with or without individual parts.
I am a survivor, I know many who have fallen and cannot join me in this statement. I know too many more who will unwillingly have to stand and join me in my quiet refrain.
I am a survivor.
