Living with Metastasis: The Challenge of the 20-Second Update

This past week end, I went to a beautiful wedding with my family. In attendance were relatives I hadn’t seen in many years, lots of people I had never met and one of my favourite teachers from grade school.

I always feel a bit of awkwardness at these kinds of events, as I brace myself for the inevitable questions, “What are you up to these days?” or “What do you do?”

No one wants to drop the c-word at a wedding, least of all me.

I have become very adept at deflecting these kinds of questions, a skill I actually acquired when I was suffering from a serious depression more than a decade ago and really did not want to talk about myself. I am also genuinely interested in other people, so it’s not hard to ask questions and keep them talking about themselves. And, my kids, who were having a great time in their own different ways, are always a great topic of conversation (I need to stop and brag here for a second. My kids were a big hit at this wedding. The best compliment of the night came from a young guy who told my spouse and me that we had two great kids. “They are like night and day but they are both really cool. You must be doing a great job with them because they are both great people.” I already knew that but it was so great to hear).  But my life as a mom-writer-cancer patient does not provide me with the twenty second synopsis that I could easily provide pre-diagnosis.

I like my life now and most of the time I am really happy. But I also miss my job, and perhaps even more, I miss my former identity. I liked being able to say, “I do research and communications for a large public sector union.” I am working on being able to proudly say that I am a writer but I can’t quite do that yet (especially since talk of my writing inevitably leads back to the c-word). And, so when I introduced myself to my former teacher, I simply told her that I was on leave from my job with a union.

As I write this, I am wondering if I have internalized the shame experienced by some cancer patients. Ever since I was a little girl, I have been very ambitious. There were goals I had set for myself that I was very close to achieving when I was diagnosed. I have long known that I am disappointed that these goals are now out of my reach. It never occurred to me that perhaps I am embarrassed as well.

I need to keep working at getting past this feeling. I don’t need to talk about cancer at a wedding but I don’t need to feel that it’s something I need to hide.

I realize too that I’m still pretty ambitious. The nature of these ambitions has changed but there are still many things I want to do with my life. And I still want to keep living for a long, long time.

One of the first people I met when we arrived at the wedding was a family member who completed cancer treatment not long ago (she is a also a really cool woman, a natural organizer, an artist and a mom to two teenage boys). We hadn’t seen each other in more than two years. There was a moment’s silence while we stopped to look into each other’s eyes. Then I said, “We’re here.” And we hugged.