Cancer is Fear, But It’s Not All Bad

Well it is that time of year again. No, not the Holiday season - it’s not quite time yet! Even though I am already seeing holiday-themed commercials, I am still talking about Halloween and autumn.

Getting enough scares from blood cancer

This is the spookiest season of the year and one where we scare each other on purpose to have a little fun, but, honestly, living with chronic cancer gives us enough scares. When you are hoping it won’t return, every pain, poke, abnormal number, or phantom itch can fill you with anxiety and, yes, fear.

I remember last year, as I was sitting on my couch after getting a pain in my abdomen, someone invited me to a haunt. For those who don’t know, a “haunt” is what the cool kids now call a haunted house, and they really ramped it up.

For those who have never been, this isn’t your parent’s haunted house. Now you have to sign waivers, pass a 10-point physical, and promise them your firstborn before you are even allowed to step foot through the door. Yeah, it’s that serious, and they do their best to scare the heck out of you! It is entertaining for sure, but for me and others who live with blood cancer, well, nothing will ever compare to the terrifying moment we heard that word, “cancer,” so a guy in a hockey mask holding a saws-all covered in fake blood just doesn’t stack up.

The scariest thing a person can go through

This time of year always reminds me that cancer is one of the scariest things a person can go through. Yes, it seems like common sense that cancer is frightening, but I don’t think anyone who hasn’t gone through it themselves can truly understand.

Yes, by-standers understand that cancer comes with anxiety, but they will never experience the gut-wrenching, all-encompassing terror that comes with hearing you might be dying. Even if your cancer isn’t terminal and they make that clear up front, your mind still goes to the worst places - the dark corners of your mind where the phantoms your brain invents get made real and nothing, especially not a mask-wearing out-of-work-actor, can compare to that.

Living with fear

Living with cancer is living with fear. I know, it sounds morbid and forlorn, but it is true. Even if you are deemed in remission, (they never use the “c” word, cured), you can’t help but wonder every time you get a phantom pain in the vicinity, or every time your blood tests show a slightly abnormal number, “is my cancer back?” That’s a scary thought to have, and it’s pretty much involuntary too - there isn’t much you can do to stop it from happening.

Instead, we learn to live with that fear. A fear that crops up out of nowhere at 2am when you can’t sleep or at 1pm at the movies with a friend. When that thought crops up and you get a hit of fear, mainlined to your brain like when Bane turns on his green juice in the comics, you can’t help but experience a real, visceral, terror, even if just for a second. That’s the fear cancer patients live with every day.

Learning to live with fear

I know, I know, it sounds awful. A life sentence of dread and anxiety that still happens even years after remission, but it’s not all bad. Really, it isn’t. There are a few benefits to living like this and the first one is that you no longer sweat the small stuff, as they say. If cancer has taught me anything it is that when faced with the real, mortal danger of not surviving the month, paying your electric bill a little late is so far down the list of real concerns that it’s almost laughable.

Even losing a job or the end of a relationship doesn’t compare. Yes, sure, it still hurts because we are human beings, not robots, but it doesn’t reach the level of the fear and sadness of possibly losing years of your life. It really puts things in perspective and, if you so desire it, allows you to brush off most of what life throws your way as much less alarming than it used to feel.

Sharpening your sense of empathy

Also, living with the fear of cancer day in and day out can really hone your sense of empathy. Admittedly, before I got cancer I lived with three decades of chronic illness, rheumatoid arthritis, so I already had a pretty developed sense of empathy previous to cancer coming into the picture. When the lymphoma hit, though, my empathy went from regular to a genuine super power.

If you don’t believe me you can’t ask my ex who used to make fun of me endlessly because every TV show, movie, and especially poignant commercial would leave me with tears running down my face. I didn’t want to cry, I didn’t mean to cry, and I certainly didn’t try to cry, but my eyes just started leaking. There was nothing I could do about it because my sense of empathy was turned up to eleven. Annoying? Yes. Inconvenient? Definitely. Would I give it up? Never. Cancer is now the origin story for my psychic super ability where I can feel what others are feeling so acutely that it’s as if I am experiencing it myself. Empathy.

As you can see, living with cancer is living with fear. It goes hand in hand, and it can be bad, yes, but it can also be good. Sure, if given a choice, no one is going to pick living with fear for the rest of their life, but that’s not how cancer works as we all well know. So we make the best of it, and use it for good as well. Talk soon.