The Cancer Quarantine

What isn’t mentioned nearly enough in the world of cancer is what goes on inside your head. You feel trapped – alone. Whether you’re with loved ones or not. You feel as if you’ve been shocked with a numbing pain, except it doesn’t leave you. And this is just the beginning. Everything was going great in your life - you were THRIVING. Things were finally falling into place for you. You were in your prime; then you get hit with this.

You’re left with millions of questions and no answers. It’s a lot and it’s all at once. You feel as if no one can help you with the decisions you are about to make, because they cannot relate. Sadly enough, you are not the only one. You are not the only one suffering the cancer quarantine.

I cannot help but reflect on the last time I felt quarantined, mentally trapped. It was this time six years ago. I had just left an appointment with a thoracic surgeon who told me a tumor was compressed against my left lung which had collapsed, that my phrenic nerve was obliterated because of the tumor’s size, and that my left diaphragm was paralyzed, indefinitely. I was able to process every word he said until he followed with, “your tumor is too large to operate on, the procedure alone will kill you.”

Well, then! I mean, I appreciated his directness. When one’s life is on the line, there’s no way around any conversation on how to save it. Following this…well, shitty news, I then walked to the next facility to meet with a fertility doctor where I had 30 minutes to decide if I want to freeze my eggs or start treatment sooner. Ya know, just a quick little decision that will influence the rest of my life, no big deal. I nixed the egg-freezing; I felt that was the logical decision in case I were to die, my ‘kids’ wouldn’t even be in the picture. And well, if I survive? I’ll worry about it when I get there -- baby steps (see what I did there)?

“I was 23 years old and told I have three months to live.”

I ended what seemed like the longest day of my life at my now oncologist’s office, which I knew meant chemotherapy. I’m sitting on the exam chair as my doctor lists the next steps: chemotherapy beginning Monday. Six cycles, four days a week, eight hours a day of my [otherwise healthy] body consuming poisons to kill the 20 centimeter-wide tumor in my chest. I listen intently, though I cannot help but try to sneak a gaze over at my family to make sure they’re keeping their composure. Damn, those mother fuckers are just as bad at pretending as I am. I signed the paperwork, gathered my packet (which quickly turned into ‘the cancer binder’), and went home to run to my room and release the tears I was holding in all day for the sake of my terrified family.

I was 23 years old and told I have three months to live. I’m supposed to make the decision on how to live this new life when I can’t even make the simple decision for where I want to eat? But we don’t decide what cards are dealt to us in life. We do decide, however, how we play the hand we’ve been dealt. I began to ask myself questions in hopes of any consolation of the mind.

How am I going to work? If I can’t work, how will I pay my bills? I’m so close to graduating, do I continue school if I’m in treatment? The more the questions came to the surface, the more they seemed so…insignificant. I don’t care about any of this. My only concern was getting more days on this Earth than I was told I’d get. I refused to have only 90 days of life left.

I, at first, made the decision to keep my diagnosis to myself, my close friends, and my family. I did not want to share this information publicly at all, as my biggest fear was being treated differently. Why would I want to spend what may be my last days on this Earth being treated extra nice just because I’m dying? I soon realized it would be pretty hard trying to go out in public with friends looking like a thumb. I did save time getting ready, though, since I had no hair to style – silver lining?!

So, in this mental quarantine, social distancing wasn’t going to help. And if I can’t hide it, what good can come from me sharing this? “Owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” - Brené Brown.

I knew there was no way of escaping this new, incomprehensible reality. So, before my first chemo treatment, I announced my diagnosis publicly. Whether it seems real or not, this was a part of my life now and forever. The positive reaction I received from sharing with the public triggered an exhilarating sensation for me to fight, as if a flick of a switch. As terrifying and unreal as it all seemed, the only thing I felt sure of was that I wasn’t going to die from this.

Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; it simply means you are not in this alone.

However, that sureness slowly diminished halfway through treatment, as I discovered those “exhilarating sensations” were the initial shock and ignorance to a cancer battle that I had. Knowing how measurably difficult battling cancer is now, I’m not sure I would have been able to get through it on my own. If I didn’t have someone to share my struggles and emotions with as I continued learning the truth about fighting cancer, I wouldn’t have lived. Was it easy? Absolutely not. But nothing in life worth having is easy and let me tell you, LIFE is worth having.

It’s ultimately your decision, whether or not you decide to share your diagnosis and ask for help. But you may think you know what’s best for you and you could be wrong. For whatever reason you’re deciding not to share your diagnosis, know that you deserve all the love and support that you would get publicly. Those who did fight for their lives gave me the hope I needed when I could no longer carry it; the shoulder I could cry on that was absorbent enough to understand my tears; the encouraging words when the only ones I knew were of giving up. Sharing a stage 4 cancer diagnosis with every person I have ever known was certainly not something I had in my life plans. But had I not done it, I don’t think I would be alive.

You may be in the quarantine stage of cancer as you read this or maybe you have already lived it. I freed myself of my quarantine by releasing my trapped thoughts with those who can truly empathize with me. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; it simply means you are not in this alone. And to feel alone in as vulnerable as a state of cancer is overwhelming.

My goal with this blog is to create a space for the support that I had. The support that brought me here today. Not everyone has the same community or family that I have been gifted with, but someone should never have to go through something so traumatic in isolation. You are not the only one suffering the cancer quarantine. You are not alone.