Completed Memoir – Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard

Well, readers of my other blog will already know I have completed my cancer survivorship memoir—Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy*, Living is Hard. I have to say, I am so glad to be done with this project. I've never really enjoyed talking about myself, so obviously writing a book about the roughest years of my life was a natural step...not.
*relatively speaking

But, I felt the message important enough to slog through three and a half years of reliving memories I'd just as soon forget. Because this isn't just a book about cancer, it's a book about life after cancer—what is known as survivorship. This is a little-discussed topic compared to the rest of cancer: prevention, diagnosis, and treatment—all of which receive huge amounts of attention, research, and money. Yet, with more than twenty million cancer survivors in the world today, a number growing every year, the issue of post-cancer complications from treatments, the mental and emotional scarring, the physical handicaps, is at least as important as any of the other aspects of cancer.

Survivorship (n): In cancer, survivorship focuses on the health and life of a person with cancer post treatment until the end of life. It covers the physical, psychosocial, and economic issues of cancer, beyond the diagnosis and treatment phases. Survivorship includes issues related to the ability to get health care and follow-up treatment, late effects of treatment, second cancers, and quality of life. Family members, friends, and caregivers are also considered part of the survivorship experience.

This will be a short post, so for a longer update on my life, go to Surviving the Cure.

I leave you with an excerpt from my book.
Ciao

Surviving the Cure: 

Cancer was Easy*, Living is Hard

*relatively speaking

Prologue

Bump

In a way, it was a soothing motion—the gentle rocking back and forth as the uneven wheels rolled across the linoleum floor, surrounded by neutral white walls.

“Watch out for the bump,” the orderly said.

In another time, another place, to another person, it would have been hilarious.

“Watch out!” As if I had some control over whether we would be going over the bump or not. As if anything I did could affect the oncoming obstacle. Some part of me must have laughed, but it didn’t bother sharing the joke with the rest of my numbed body.

In terms of humor, it’s hard to beat a hefty dose of irony doing its best impersonation of a cream pie. Wham! Unavoidable, literally in your face, shocking, instantaneous. The best irony is a cream pie. Today, that cream pie was this orderly, wheeling me to a fate I could never have even begun to imagine, warning me about this little bump when not thirty minutes earlier I’d had the mother of all bombshells dropped on my head. My life and future vaporized so quickly and completely that all that remained were faint shadows where once they stood.

In the rare moments of lucidity during the slow walk—I guess more of a roll—I marveled at how quickly a life could come apart. How fragile and on the verge of collapse we are that the tiniest thing can be enough to topple our body. It’s like you’re a house of cards that believes it’s constructed from steel and concrete and mortar so tough that nothing short of the destruction of the Earth would topple it. That’s why it’s so shocking when you learn the truth—that under the thin veneer of confidence and surety is a wobbly framework ready to implode at the drop of a hat.

A week. That’s all it took for my house of cards to come crashing down. From young adult on the cusp of spreading his wings and embarking on his first flight of independence to a quickly failing mess of malfunctioning cells. From a bright life ahead to an immanent dark death. And all it had taken was one word.

Leukemia.

“Watch out for the bump.” I had as much control over that bump as I did the next few months. Maybe more. I could have gotten out of the chair and stepped over this obstacle. I didn’t, but at least it was an option. My future offered no real options. Chemical warfare or certain death, take your pick. “A very wise choice, sir. We have an excellent selection of noxious chemicals for you today, only the very best vintage for you, young sir!”

For both the bump and my new life, all I could do was hold on tight and pray for the best…and hope that would be enough.

Bump-bump went the wheels.

Bump-bump went my heart.

Bump-bump went my life.