Someone near and dear to me has recently been diagnosed with melanoma, bringing back memories of those first days in 2001 after my dermatologist confirmed that nasty black and purple mole on the back of my leg was cancerous. At the time I didn’t really know what melanoma meant, other than it was the deadly kind of skin cancer. Here’s what I recall from those first days.
The sucker punch
I sat on the exam table waiting for the doctor to come in and take my stitches out, not too worried about the results of the biopsy. He soon walked into the room and asked how I was doing and calmly told me the tests came back as melanoma. He rattled off the details of my mole – it’s size, depth and circumference – as I stared off into space, the word cancer filling my vision and drowning out whatever the good-looking doctor told me. I know why they tell you to bring someone along for these types of appointments. Who hears anything after the first utterance of the c-word?
I was alone.
I caught some details. I needed surgery and a biopsy of my lymph nodes. My tumor was not huge, but not small either. He already called a surgical oncologist who specialized in melanoma and agreed to take me on as a patient. I just needed to call him to set up a time for surgery.
The doctor handed me some papers and I numbly walked through the waiting area and out the doors into the bright Colorado sunshine, the blue skies contrasting with the shadow and darkness that threatened to swallow me whole. I stopped for a second not remembering where I parked, then made the zombie walk to my car. I slid into the driver’s seat of my sporty Honda with the cool spoiler and five-speed manual transmission that I so proudly purchased after my recent promotion and leaned against the headrest and closed my eyes.
This can’t be happening. My birthday is in six days. Will it be my last? My sister had leukemia when she was fifteen, shouldn’t I be immune to this disease? Hasn’t our family already sacrificed? Didn’t we already have blood on our door, meaning this should pass us over like the biblical stories depict?
Feeling paralyzed and numb, I sat in my car until I could bring myself back to reality. When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was the coveted sunroof I desperately wanted, the only car feature I cared about as I scoured used car ads the year before.
F–ing sunroof, I thought. Goddamn f–ing sunroof.
The cancer devil
My mind was a jumble of thoughts as I walked into the office and sat next to my colleagues around the big wooden boardroom table for our regular meeting. I forced a smile and half-hearted greetings pretending to be the same person I was two hours ago when I left for my appointment.
I saw their mouths moving but could not hear what they were saying. Cancer just kept whispering in my ear, pulling me down into a murky underworld, a suffocating hole of darkness. I tried to quiet the voice in my head, sitting straighter in my chair focusing directly on my coworker who was speaking, forcing my ears to hear what she was saying. Desperately trying to bring myself back into the room and out of the shadows.
This tug of war became a regular and frustrating practice. Cancer thoughts dive-bombed meetings and otherwise normal interactions with their swift and sneaky reminders that nothing was normal anymore. They’d show up on a run, in the middle of a class lecture, and even sitting at the bar having a drink and some laughs with friends. But more often than not they’d show up when I found myself alone, lying in my bed with nothing to distract me from the cancer devil.
Guilt
Melanoma felt like my fault. It was not a random disease like the leukemia that nearly took my sister’s life. And why didn’t I get this stupid mole checked out sooner? It felt like my doing; totally unavoidable if only… If only I would have worn sunscreen instead of baby oil as I laid my teenage bikini-clad body out on the blanket behind our house? Why did I wear tube tops all those summers in the cornfields of Iowa detasseling for hours on end? What about those summers working outside at college tending the pristine campus gardens? And that damn sunroof.
Why was I so obsessed with being tan? My beauty and self-image problems would take another post – or even a book – but the sense that it was my fault fueled my desire to keep it to myself. Having skin cancer meant admitting my status as a sun-worshipping idiot who got what she deserved. Take the guilt and add a bit of stubborn pride and you get a reluctant patient who’d prefer to handle this in the silence – or madness – of her own head. That was the way I dealt with most things – by myself.
To tell or not to tell
Driving back to the office I wondered who I needed to tell. My boss? His boss? My staff? What about my colleagues on the leadership team – the people with whom I was meeting in a half hour?
I hated asking for help and prided myself for being quite self-sufficient over the years. Believing weakness was the only reason one would ask for help, I found myself on shaky ground. I needed help, even just physical stuff like getting to work, but I also needed emotional support. My fundamental belief that I must take care of myself conflicted with the reality of the situation. I didn’t want to tell anyone about my cancer much less ask for help.
I was on crutches after the surgery and unable to drive so I sheepishly called a coworker to ask for a ride to a meeting. He was happy to take me, but I was not prepared for him to ask why I was in a brace. I stuttered out some white lie about knee surgery, acting like it was from some athletic injury instead of surgery to remove a tumor.
Others opened doors and carried my stuff around the office. It was humbling to say the least, although awkward when I tried to explain my mysterious “knee surgery” that only required a few weeks of crutches. No, it wasn’t an ACL or MCL or any other typical knee surgery. Each time I told my little knee injury story the voice of guilt fought with my secret desire to tell the truth. But I told myself I couldn’t be so needy as to blurt out cancer to people I barely knew.
If I couldn’t even be honest about the reason for my procedure, how could I be honest about the rest of it? Asking for emotional support was out of the question. I had no experience doing that and I wasn’t ready to learn. I could take care of myself and really wanted to keep it that way. But why was I so desperate for companionship, longing for someone to just listen to me or just be with me, especially during those panicky moments when I thought about the real possibility of my cancer spreading? That was the real struggle.
Not surprisingly, I kept my news to a small circle of friends and family, the few I felt would console and not judge. Some unexpected friends emerged, people I would not have predicted to be by my side, and I found a few safe places in which to share my fears.
In the end, grace found me despite my reluctance and resistance. Kindness permeated my interactions and I gradually accepted the gift that came when I let go and let people in. My weakness did not scare people away, but drew the right people to me.
Looking back
I still have a lot to learn about asking for help, and looking back I see how closed I was – even those tiny moments of vulnerability felt like a big shift in my twenties. Thankfully I let that first melanoma begin to change me, to begin to crack the hard shield I had put around myself. When the cancer came back I told everyone, letting go of my pride and ego, begging for prayers, support, positive vibes, voodoo magic or whatever anyone could offer. Stage four busted me wide open.
My first diagnosis rocked my world and called to question the stubborn and private way I had been living my life. It didn’t completely break through, but it uncovered a softer side, a vulnerable side, and it helped me put things in perspective. I guess it prepared me for what was to come.
People are diagnosed with some form of cancer every day and no two paths are the same. Maybe not everyone wants to cuss at inanimate objects or beat themselves up over past behaviors. Perhaps the cancer devil doesn’t whisper in their ear. And maybe they tell everyone because they’re not afraid of asking for help. Not everyone wears a shield.
I don’t pretend to have the answers for other cancer patients, survivors or their caregivers. Maybe some of this resonates and maybe not. I only know my truth and hope by speaking it that it may comfort someone else. We’re not alone on this journey no matter how dark and scary and lonely we may feel.
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