Welcome to Cancer Country

Two summers ago, my cousin Ruth hosted a backyard party at her house. Not for her usual party reasons — Memorial Day, Fourth of July, one of her children’s birthdays, or just for the heck of it. This was her F*** Cancer party.

Only nine months younger than me, Ruth was diagnosed with the same type of breast cancer I was treated for: invasive lobular carcinoma. In another ironic twist, her diagnosis arrived nine months after mine.

My first reaction when I heard Ruth had cancer was a harsh expletive followed by a thought that, to my mind at the time, made sense: I had cancer already. I’d taken the bullet for her, for her sister, for my sister. Of course, it doesn’t work that way, neither statistically nor logically. But the thought lodged in my brain none the less.

My wish — that I could bar our family’s door against cancer — was just that: a wish. I couldn’t even ban the disease from my own life!

As far as the doctors are concerned, I’m doing fine. All signs of my cancer are gone, and they have been since my surgery in 2022. That is, all signs of cancer that might show up on a scan or during an exam. But what’s stuck around is Cancer with a capital C: the anxiety around it, the fear it might return, the continual reminders via regular medical appointments that I live in cancer country now. My doctors can tell me I’m in the clear all they want. But what I know is that “in the clear” is just not part of the deal for me anymore. Not for me, not for Ruth, not for any of us who’ve been there.

The ‘After’

The party was meant to be the two of us putting up our middle fingers to the beast while raising a tidy sum for breast cancer research (we donated to Making Strides Against Breast Cancer).

And we had a great night, spending time around the pool with our large extended family and many friends. Quite a few of those folks said to me and to Ruth that we were “rock stars” and “warriors” and that we had “kicked cancer’s a**.”

But had we?

Every time my cousin and I talk, cancer lurks in the background. “Look at this,” she might say, tugging down the collar of her shirt and the edge of her bra to show me a mark or a divot that wasn’t there before. Or I’ll show her a faded bit of scar (no one other than my husband and my doctors (and Ruth) has seen my reconstructed boobs). We trade notes on tamoxifen side effects and what our doctors said this time. We talk about statistics and screenings. I write about health for a living, and Ruth is a physician. We understand a lot, but when we talk to each other, we’re patients with heads full of worry.

The upside is that we both know where the other is coming from. We both know that life after cancer is never fully after. It colors every other medical encounter. For example:

• I have a routine colonoscopy, and the doctor’s office calls a couple of days later to see how I’m feeling post-procedure. This is part of their protocol, just making sure I came out of the anesthesia okay and am eating normally again. And yet just seeing the office number on my phone triggers a stomach-sinking moment.
• I see a dermatologist. Is that scabby bit of redness on my abdomen more cancer? (It’s not.)
• I talk to an old friend who’s a two-time cancer survivor and just had a hysterectomy. Her symptoms are my symptoms. Her fears are mine.
• If I bleed just a little, is it nothing or the start of another ride on the cancer carousel?

The Cancer Carousel

Nothing I’m saying here about my experience will be surprising to anyone who’s had cancer. Take my mother: Before my diagnosis, my mom was treated for lymphoma, which involved a splenectomy on her 79th birthday, followed by chemotherapy and immunotherapy. She lost weight, lost her hair, rocked a wig, and came back swinging.

Now 82, she’s long been back to her book club and garden club, golfing, and Pilates class. And her now-silver curls are, to me, beautiful. But the spots that appeared on a recent routine CT scan? Not so beautiful. Turns out that after a follow-up PET scan and a week of waiting and worrying, those spots, while not “nothing,” aren’t a huge “something” either. This is what her kind oncologist tells her, holding her hands in his while my father and I hover nervously.

Honestly, if there’s a person alive who could kick cancer’s a**, it’s my mother. But even her iron will can’t shove the big C all the way out of her life. Not for lack of trying. It just won’t go.

They’ll test again in a few months. And then again. And then some more. Round and round this carousel goes — and you don’t get off, you just slow down for a bit and try to forget. But it’s always there, that jangly music of the fairground and the scent of too many fried treats.

We’re in This Together

Long after that party, the same family members and friends and many others kindly ask how my health is, how I’m feeling. And I understand the subtext: “You’re still a rock star, right?”

I’ve gotten fairly adept at tailoring my responses. “I feel great,” I’ll say to passing acquaintances. “It’s never quite the same,” I might say to someone much closer.

All Ruth and I have to do is raise an eyebrow to one another. She doesn’t have to ask, and I don’t have to answer. Those well-meaning folks — our friends and loved ones — do their very best by saying, “I’m sure it’s nothing,” if we mention an appointment, test, or scan.

But for us there is no more “it’s nothing.”

F*** cancer, sure. But it f***s you right back. I may be on this cancer carousel for life, but who better to go round and round with than my cousin, my mother, and all the others we both know and don’t know? We’re all in this together. So we may as well throw a party.