There Are No Safe Dreams After Cancer Diagnosis

Last fall I told my Priest I felt like getting cancer was the death of all my dreams for my life.   

When I pray my lack of control of my future comes so near the surface sometimes my hands shake.  In the cancer survivor literature there is discussion that many young survivors get PTSD from the experience.  I don’t know if that describes me or not.  As a naturally future oriented person, a person who used to love to imagine all the possible “what ifs?”, it’s easy to fall prey to anxiety. 

Fear doesn’t quite do justice to the emotional experience of being a young adult, surviving the initial treatment for cancer but being told it could still come back at any time.  Of watching so many other young people you get to know in support groups die.  The other day I was in a group of younger moms from church and one remarked upon learning about my previous diagnosis that, “It’s good to be reminded every once in a while about our mortality.”

I didn’t tell her that I actually think of my death every day.

Dreaming of a future full of something other than cancer or a fast walk toward death is like walking a rope bridge over a canyon.  I really don’t know when I will die.  Or from what.  Having that kind of control is an illusion of safety in which most people my age sit comfortable.  My walk isn’t some sort of steel structure where I can skip safely into old age.  Five years ago when I was diagnosed I was afraid I wouldn’t live to the age I am now, 38.  I pray that I would be granted the grace to live to be my parent’s age.  But I don’t really expect to live that long.

Most of the time thinking of my death isn’t some sort of self-indulgent narcissism but a moment by moment decision to choose gratitude for the life I’ve already lived and a vow to live each moment like it was my last.  Because it is reality that it could very well be.

This Wednesday morning is a grey rainy day.  Josh has been gone for work for 10 days and isn’t due home until early Saturday morning.  Life at home without him is dull.  I miss my spouse. 

I miss talking to him, especially at this time when my dreams for a future life have been bubbling up.  I am writing again, not just in my journal, but I’m editing my very first book and outlining two more. Will I be there to write their chapters?

Another young survivor wrote to me to ask for advice about surviving the spiritual upheaval that comes with a cancer diagnosis.  I mentor other women through this process sometimes.  But I have to tell her, there are no easy answers because there isn’t any guarantee that she will be alive in 2 years.  I wrote this poem in the first six months after I was “done” with my treatment and wanted to share with you all and with her.

Ode to a life where the lymph node left behind after mastectomy doubled in size in the past 2 weeks (I see the surgeon on Tuesday to make a plan).

Or, My Ode to a Node

Another sleepless night, another night without Your robe,

a hem, a touch of wool between my fingertips.

I know You promise eternal life but why,

why won’t You promise me eternal earth,

-a full measure of days to spend where I have loved so hard?

Is it that You mean for me to know

Your agony in the garden,

the endless night of waiting  
for the Father's will be done in death

Will I weep blood and sweat out my sorrow

at having gone to soon?

O’ world don’t attempt to pacify me with empty platitudes

when you can’t make good on your promise of healing. 

You can’t cut a hole in the roof of the hospital,

lower me in

and expect me to walk out whole. 

I need more than just to hear that my sins are forgiven,

I need to take up my mat and walk

instead of suffering yet again at the hands of many physicians.

Why can’t I beg You like a child

and know,

promise that You will give me my heart’s desire?

How will I know that You have heard me when I cry?

Where is my rainbow? 

The rain is falling and I can’t see Your face. 

One of the biggest spiritual problems that to this day drives me to my knees is this: my belief in God’s goodness is dependent upon my life going the way I wish it.  Maybe not every little thing going right, but for sure the big ones.  And my faith shouldn’t be built this way.  But I still find myself stuck in grey days and afraid.

Proverbs 31:25, on which I base this blog reads, “She is clothed in strength and dignity, and laughs without fear of the future.”  I even have a larger version of this scripture up on the wall in my kitchen.  When I’m in a grey day, battling anxiety or fear, tired of parenting without my husband, or just a bleh kinda day I like to sit with this verse on my mind.

What do you do to battle fear?