An Amazing Journey, Thus Far
By Diane McDaniel
On Tuesday of this week I had my second to last chemotherapy treatment. Eighteen weekly treatments in all, beginning June 16: seventeen treatments in the rearview mirror, one more to go.
At this time next week I will be done with chemotherapy.
I am elated that treatment is ending while simultaneously apprehensive in anticipation of what will come next. I have many questions and concerns.
Small questions: Last week was pretty much the pits; how much worse will I feel this week and next? How quickly will I begin to recover once chemotherapy treatment is finished?
Big questions: What will my upcoming surgery reveal about how successful my chemotherapy treatment has been? What does my future hold?
Bottom line question: Will I ever be my familiar self again?
More than ever my physical state and resulting emotions drive my sense of well being, and I’m unsure of what each day will bring. To remain secure I stick close to home, affect a state of repose that I don’t always feel, and spend a lot of time with my nose in a novel.
Ironically, what I am reading is the opposite of calm: embroiled in volcanic emotions, dangerous friendships, and irrepressible anger, the heroines of Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan quartet provide a counterbalance to my quiet outer life by giving voice to a roiling inner state.
A roiling inner state…
I’ve always valued my ability to remain calm in the face of various stresses, and throughout the process of being treated for cancer I’ve endeavored to remain mostly composed as a way of coping. I work on making my days a type of active savasana, if such a contradictory state can be imagined, much less realized. As I reach the end of treatment, more and more I find myself managing incendiary emotions, surfacing them for notice and consideration and then sending them on their way lest they get the best of me. I remind myself to be patient and kind, but I do wonder what would happen if it all came spilling out.
What would happen if my roiling inner life came spilling out?
Certainly I am more comfortable with the generous, capable self that emerges when I feel well, which used to be most of the time. In this state of mind I am immensely thankful for all that has been given to me during the last few months. I have received in spades the most important gifts of community and friendship, the best that those who want to connect with me have to offer. I have been brought into close confidences, sharing in the inner lives of close friends and family. People I know well and those I am getting to know better have let me into their lives in an unprecedented way. Whatever connections we already had, we have deepened them during the past few months.
Some of the most strengthening connections have been with women who have gone through or are now going through a cancer experience. In our shared experience we have forged a shortcut to intimacy by getting in deep while we are just coming to know each other.
In the process of making and deepening connections I have become more the person I always wanted to be. I am more open with my friendliness, less guarded with my affections. I find myself hugging just about everybody I see.
It’s an incredible thing to know that friends are thinking about me every day. Some are even praying for me, which I deeply appreciate despite my lack of religiosity. I know that people are keeping me in their mind because every day I receive some kind of communication — quick email, beautifully written card, lunches and dinners dropped off or enjoyed together, gorgeous flowers, thoughtful gift, warm hug in the “carpool” line at school — reminding me of their presence.
I am so grateful for their caring. I know that I am truly well supported.
Although I remain at core still not interested in cancer, I was deeply moved by the essays that neurologist Oliver Sacks published in the The New York Times during the last few months of his life as he came to terms with the cancer that he knew was going to and eventually did kill him. It was wonderful to see him bring the compassion and curiosity that he applied to writing about the strange and wonder-full conditions suffered by his patients to his own affliction. I especially appreciated the question that animated these end-of-life essays: what is meant by living a good and interesting life?
As I consider that question for myself, I think about the areas that have contributed to a good and interesting life for me in the past.
Marrying Philippe and bringing Dexter and Eva into our family were by far the best decisions I made to ensure that I would live a good and interesting life. Even when our symphony is not entirely harmonious, every day is filled to the brim with opportunities for us to be kind and generous to each other as we share our remarkable, individual worlds.
Exploring my individual interests and doing things I like is, for me, key to living a good and interesting life. Even though I’ve been physically limited during the last few months and so have largely had to set aside my exploration of the physical world, the exploration of my inner landscape has definitely been enhanced. The opportunity to write and publish and develop an audience for my work — which I initially began on LinkedIn and then continued on Medium after my cancer diagnosis — has been a source of joy for me during this crazy year. Writing and publishing on my own initiative is not something I would have been likely to do absent the stressful experiences that I’ve faced this year, and I am thankful for the gift of being prompted to develop and explore this aspect of my self expression.
Work has always been a critical aspect of my ability to feel that I am living a good and interesting life. Because I was satisfied with the work that I was doing, for the past several years this wasn’t an area that I actively interrogated; however, during the past year this piece of the puzzle has remained the most confounding portion of my thinking about the future. For the most part, I found the work I’ve done in the past to be important, contributive, and meaningful, and I certainly was passionate about it. What I ponder now is how best to increase the connection between what I care about and how I spend my time. While the wild journey that I’ve been on for the past year has brought me insights in many areas, this portion remains somewhat oblique. It is an area of life satisfaction about which I continue to search for more clarity pretty much every day.
The other day I was reminded in a startling way of how important my work is not only to me but the to the other members of my family. Dexter was angling for me to purchase a hover board for him, and he asked Eva what she was planning on putting on her Christmas list. I was absolutely floored when the first (and only) item on her Christmas wish list was a job for me. I was reminded of my similarly surprised reaction when her response to my letting her know that I was no longer working at SAGE was instantly to burst into tears. I wouldn’t have expected that my working would be so laden with meaning for her.
I strongly suspect that in expressing concern about my work what Eva really wants is for our life to go back to “normal,” to the rhythms that she has always known. Although she was sad when I couldn’t make various school events because of work commitments or when I was out of town for several days each month, this was the life she had always known. As she noted when I queried her about her wish, she likes having me pick her up from school and at home in the afternoons. It’s just that she is more familiar with a different version of me, and she’d like to see that person again.
While I know that the journey we’ve been on this past year will never lead us back to the path on which we were traveling before, at a deep level I am looking for the same thing as Eva.
Without having moved on from my job, lost my mother to a cruel disease, and endured cancer and its treatment all during this past year, I would not be experiencing life in the rich way that I am today. The amazing journey that I am on — with its rhythms of joy and despair — has given me the opportunity to think meaningfully about how I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short it is. I’ve taken the opportunity to ask what my ideal life looks like and how to get there. I know that I may not find definitive answers to all of my questions, but I am without a doubt that asking them enriches the journey that I’m on.
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