Dancing With Cancer In a Monastery

 

The grace of solitude.

Last week I went to Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky. Traveling to an austere Trappist monastery might seem an odd decision because I’m not Catholic, but the week of solitude helps me imagine what my life is going to be like if/when my cancer is no longer detectible.

One reason for going is that Thomas Merton lived here when he wrote the words that have guided my life for a long time. He helped me accept that periods of being alone are needed to understand my struggles. I’m hoping that being quiet and listening for five days will calm my monkey mind and help me discern what I want to do with the life I have left.

The Curious Case of the Man Whose Cancer Couldn't Be Found

 

Thomas E. Kennedy, prostate cancer, maybe

It’s hard to find a man who writes about his prostate cancer in any detail. Writing about it with humor is an added bonus.

Thomas Kennedy’s essay, “I am Joe’s Prostate,” is funny because it plays to the insecurities and embarrassment that men feel being naked in front of a female nurse and trying to urinate into a small pot. Having probes inserted into intimate parts of your body doesn’t preserve much modesty. Kennedy’s journey began when his wife said he pissed “like an old man.” So off he goes to see the doctor and find out what’s going on. 

The Trauma Dragon of Cancer

 

Suffering is physical, emotional, and mental.

Having cancer is extremely stressful. If you’ve had cancer, you know this in your bones. If you haven’t, then while you suspect this is true, you don’t have a “feel” for how extensive it is. 

It doesn’t matter what cancer treatments we had, none of them are easy, and they leave permanent marks on us physically, emotionally, and mentally — the nausea, the debilitating pain, the feeling of being torn inside. While many of the details will fade over time, the harder ones are tattooed on our skin and engraved in our minds. Sometimes flashbacks wake us up at night.

Cancer is One Heck of a Whale

(whale sculpture by Preston Jackson, made out of recycled plastic bottles)

 Jessica McGhee, cancer artist

Having cancer is enormous. Like a whale. I picked up this image from Jessica McGhee when she spoke to my cancer support group. She began collecting the medical items from her cancer treatments — the bandages, elastic wraps, gauze, oncology name tags, and so on. The mound of this physical entity kept growing, and she started playing with it until it took on the form of a mishappened blue whale that is eerily beautiful and poignantly accurate. 

Writing the Grit of Cancer

 

Writers With Cancer, part 1

As you would expect, people who write for a living are going to write about their cancer, although this is not always the case. One evening while doing research online, I found a list of poets, novelists, essayists, and nonfiction writers. I know there are many more writers to discover and realize that this beginning list has only contemporary ones. There are also writers throughout history to discover who wrote their own cancer accounts.

Polite Doesn't Butter My Muffin

 

Being honest about our cancer.

After you discover you have cancer, it’s a daily dilemma about how honest to be when people ask how you’re doing. Saying “I’m fine” shares nothing of value. Being polite gets you none of the affirmation of a high five or the empathy of a long, warm hug.

Lyrical Prostate

 Ifor Thomas, prostate cancer

Why should you care about Ifor Thomas if you don’t have prostate cancer? Because in this space we are a cancer support community. We care about each other’s journey with different kinds of cancer, and we seek to be supportive. To listen to what the others in our group are going though strengthens our bonds with each other and increases our understand of what cancer takes away from us and what it brings.

Cafes, Cancer Writing, and Humor

 

cancer humor

Cafés are therapeutic. Good coffee, often fresh bakery items, and a place away where you can imagine a life beyond cancer. Instead of feeling cooped up at home, you’re among people, so you feel connected to the flow of everyday life. You can be reflective and creative. No one has to know you have cancer, unless you want to share this, and the staff in independent coffee places can be a great support.

Cartoonist Miriam Engelberg had two favorite San Francisco cafés where she went every day to create cartoons about her breast cancer, searching for the humor that existed along its edges to keep her anxiety under control. There are two cafés I go to in town, depending on the weather – one is indoors and the other has a patio under oak trees.

Cancer Is Not My Warp or Weft

Sarah, melanoma, also a mother, writer, actor, digital creator

Sarah is not her cancer. Cancer is not the warp and weft of her being. Cancer is woven into only part of her life. She wrote about this last week (9/8) in an insightful post on her Substack account Pause for Cancer.

Cancer is something that happens to you. It’s not something you are, and it’s not the work you choose to do to explore your passions in life, like being a writer, an engineer, a teacher, or a nurse. Her recent rumination started when she ran into a friend of a friend who said, “you’re the one with the cancer, right?” So her identity with this other person began with her being cancer. I imagine, and hope, that as they talked, probably about everything but cancer, that Sarah the Person replaced the initial label.

Cancer In the Air and Soil Around Us

 

Sandra Steingraber, environmental cancer

We know that some cancers are inherited. We know that if you use tobacco, you are likely to get lung cancer (John Updike). We know there are industrial carcinogens in the environment around us, although we may not be able to name one.

What Sandra Steingraber does in her 1997 book, Living Downstream, is document the cancer-causing chemicals in the air, water, and land. The World Health Organization estimates that 80-90% of cancers are instigated by environmental carcinogens, occupational risk factors, and lifestyle choices. In other words, these cancers are preventable. Only 5 to 10 % are hereditary.