These are facts: three years ago you were 23, you were in graduate school, and you had cancer. This wasn’t always the case, of course, but that’s what became of you over a single Thanksgiving break. Other facts will emerge over time, many will begin to feel as though they had always been a part of yourself, but these three are constants. You hold them close to yourself.
People say you’re lucky—it’s unheard of, really, to have had this and survive at your age. Typically women with ovarian cancer catch it too late, already bursting into stage four and near-certain death.
Virtually everyone you told—no one at first, and then more as was necessary—told you things. Remedies. Coping strategies. Dietary adjustments. And you listened, made lists and bought books, googled and googled and googled. Sat up late into the night texting your mom about next steps, about stages, and what you were going to do. But there was a vast list of things no one thought to mention, about what was happening now and what would happen shortly and how both of those things would band together to shape the future you.
No one ever tells you, exactly, that you’ll never stop feeling like a patient, that you’ll lug a binder of records to every appointment for years to come. No one mentions the swell of pride you’ll feel when a doctor comments on how organized and annotated that binder is. How much you’ve documented in such a short time.
Each time you pull that binder out or stuff it into your purse or hide it at the back of your bookshelf, you’ll think of going to Target with your mom to pick it out.
“Which one says ‘I’m soon-to-be barren’?” you’ll joke.
“Stripes?” she’ll say. Neither of you ever thought this is how you’d spend a Saturday afternoon.
You’ll think of the spring you moved home after graduating from college, planning on working three jobs to save money for grad school. How you would spend weekends crafting with your mom and watching mindless TV. How you found a rhythm and a friendship that had always been a struggle as you gravitated more toward your dad when you were young. You learned about the time she accidentally killed a duck while golfing, about her hidden accordion-playing skills, about that one time she went rafting out west and almost drowned.
Then, just a year later, you’ll talk to her about things you were always too afraid to bring up: kids and how you will never, ever want one. How you’re scared that after this it’ll be too hard to be loved, that you are defective. How you don’t know to talk about this.
You’ll stay overnight in a hospital for the first time after the second surgery. Your mom, knowing how much you love animals, will bribe the therapy dog with cereal to hop onto your bed and snuggle with you. His name is Wilbur and he’ll stay with you for half an hour before continuing his rounds. He’ll visit twice more before you’re discharged.
“Cheese sticks,” you’ll demand while driving home from the hospital two days later. “That’s what I’m going to have when I can eat again.”
“You can have anything you want,” your mom will answer.
“I want a million cheese sticks. And onion rings.”
“Let’s take it slow, huh? We’ll see how you feel when we get home.” You both chuckle, knowing you’ll be subsisting on popsicles and chipped ice for a few days more at least.
You never get those cheese sticks.
No one tells you that you’ll wait to see your oncologist for a follow-up appointment until one in the morning on a Saturday months later, because he is running late after taking care of patients more critical than you. No one tells you that you’ll accept this with a yawn and without question. You’ll wonder when the last time he cooked a meal was, the last time he left the hospital. You’ll wear your rattiest sweatpants and a billowing shirt with holes at the hem. Your mom will pack a bag with games and snacks and the two of you will sit in the waiting room on sinking couches eating Twizzlers, drinking dollar iced tea from the McDonalds across the street, and playing solitaire. When you sigh heavily—for no real reason, more out of exhaustion than anything—she’ll reach out and hold your hand.
No one tells you that you’ll have to recount over and over just how you discovered the mass in your body, that you’ll have to see face after face light up in shock when you say, “My mom found it, actually.”
You’ll explain that your mom isn’t a doctor and it wasn’t exactly ethical, her doing an ultrasound on you, but she runs a hospital imaging department and sometimes it’s easier this way. You’ll replay the look on her face when she first spots it and can tell immediately that something was wrong. You’ll remember the silence of the exam room when she leaves to get the radiologist. It’s crushing. Even without confirmation, you know it’s bad.
Months after that scan, you’ll lose an ovary, a fallopian tube, 15 pounds, and the trust in your own body. You’ll become alarmingly good at sticking to a clear liquid diet and develop a sharp distaste for yellow Gatorade. You’ll have to wear long-sleeved sweaters through a sweltering D.C. summer because the bruises on your arms from the IVs and blood draws make you look like a junkie. You’ll gain a promise that this is not over—may never be over—and the unsettling fact that the rest of your womanhood must come out before you turn 30.
You’ll carry with you a bodyful of scars, with 12 alone scattered across your abdomen like a grim constellation. The longest one will dip inward, sitting just above your belly button as a reminder of everything that’s gone so wrong in the last few years.
You’ll dread people asking questions.
“Where have you been? What have you been up to?” Breaking myself apart, becoming unrecognizable, you’ll answer.
“Why did you get a dog?” To distract me, you’ll say.
“How are you?” You can’t really explain.
You’ll lose count of the number of conversations you have about babies and the ones you’ll never have. Doctors will condescend to you, saying you’ll change your mind and that you should freeze your eggs just in case because you just never know. But you do know and you don’t have the money or drive to freeze anything, if only someone would listen to you.
The whole process will be hard, though not as hard as it could have been, and no one tells you that you will feel guilty for not being sicker. You’ll feel guilty for doing this to your mother, especially, for unknowingly having a routine ultrasound become a catalyst for the worst bit of both your lives so far. You’ll apologize and she will console you over the phone, the warmth of her voice radiating from across multiple state lines.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she’ll say. “It’s not like you did this on purpose.”
You can’t answer—you’re crying too hard to get a syllable out—but you can hear her typing on the other end of the line.
“Do you want company this weekend? I can be there on Friday.”
She’ll buy a cheap flight from Detroit and get to you on the east coast in record time. You’ll bury yourselves in blankets on your couch and watch bad movies, venturing outside only for doughnuts and baking supplies. You’ll feel better, having her there.
You’ll talk to her about almost everything—everything except the feeling that you can’t shake that you have no right to be placed in the ‘cancer survivor’ category. No one ever mentions that; the feeling that you’re too ballsy asking for inclusion when you never had a port in your chest, never even lost a hair. Your cancer will never feel cancer-y enough, despite two surgeries and innumerable trips to the hospital. This will deter you from ever joining a support group; instead you choose to self-soothe with ice cream and marathons of medical dramas on DVD.
You’ll look back three years later, amazed that it’s been that long already and try to remember what it was like before. You’ll realize that you can’t.
But you call your mom. You interrupt her while she’s packing to go card-making for a weekend in northern Michigan and you talk about what you baked today. She says she’s excited to come see you in a few weeks. You tell her you love her and you promise to make an appointment for your yearly exam a few months early, just in case.
You get up, you move on, you get past it—even if it feels as though you never will. These are things nobody tells you.
I have no idea if it will be comforting to hear this from an Internet stranger, but I’m someone who likes babies ok and will probably have one someday, maybe, and I STILL see a lot of value in the “dogs are better than babies” calculus.
I’m glad it sounds like you’re doing better. I wish you continuing recovery and lots of peace and warmth in your future.
I don’t have much else to say…but thank you for sharing this.
Thank you so much for this. One other thing they don’t tell you is that eventually, you can forget for as long as five minutes at a stretch that you were ever sick.
So much of this rings true for me – never trusting my body, feeling guilty that my cancer wasn’t “serious enough,” waiting forever and ever for the amazing oncologist who never seems to leave the hospital.
It’s a strange and unique sort of trauma, I think, to have cancer and then to not have it, suddenly. I’m still finding my way through the maze but I wanted to let you know you’re not alone in your feelings. Thank you for writing this, and please hug your dog for me!
shout out to all the moms out there <3 <3
Your paragraph about not feeling like you deserve to be in the survivor category really hits home. I too had cancer, I too had two surgeries, radiation… and never lost a hair. Never even lost weight. I had cancer, yes. I don’t feel like a survivor. I don’t feel like I fought. I just did what the doctors said I needed to. I don’t know. It’s complicated.
Thanks for writing this. I’m glad you’re out the other side.
MOMS. Moms can be the best. I’ve recounted this story on the Toast before, but mine told me (well after the fact), “If harvesting eggs were as easy as jacking off into a cup, I’d have locked you in a bathroom with every bit of porn I could find, just so you’d have options.” One of the things they don’t tell you about cancer is that you find out how everyone in your life expresses love; some of them don’t know what to say in words but speak fluent lasagna, some sit in waiting rooms for hours so you don’t have to worry about rides, some show up shaven-headed to shock you into laughter, and some, it turns out, are willing to do step well outside of their normal comfort zones to make sure you get what you may not even know you need.
Welcome to the survivorship side. It’s good to see more people here.
Moms ARE the best (and also DADS, which I did not touch on, but he was equally as wonderful.) Moms should never have to deal with what my mom did and what what other moms endure.
Yes, times a thousand to your point about expression of love. Also this whole thing truly has made the relationships I have either deepen in a way I wasn’t expecting or completely shrivel up. Luckily, the love I gained far, far outweighs the, er, not love that I lost.
Thank you, I am so very glad to have made it. (And glad that you have, too.)
Thank you so much for writing this. I also had my ovary, tube, tumor and SO MANY OTHER THINGS taken earlier this year (I was 26) and I also don’t feel like I can call myself a cancer survivor…even though it’s like why else would we have had gone through all this major surgery? I also went shopping for a cancer binder at Target – mine is orange and stripey. It sits on my desk at home and I give it the finger on the regular.
A former coworker and friend of mine passed in June after her third battle with cancer, and so much of what you’ve written here reminds me of her. Particularly the way you speak of your mother – my friend’s mother became her best friend, confidant, secret keeper, caretaker, and a million more throughout her illness. She spoke about how she never expected the most meaningful relationship in her life when she was sick to be with her mother, but it was.
Anyways, thank you for writing this. It reminded me of Jac’s wide smile and intense gratitude for her life. I hope your continued recovery is smooth and wonderful.
Thank you for this! I had skin cancer 7 years ago, I was 15, I would have LOVED a therapy dog!!
I kind of like all the continuous check ups and visits, they make me feel safe. I don’t trust my body, but I trust the doctors, and I like the fact they always have my body under control, so if it does something stupid they’ll catch it.
Also, don’t you hate when someone sees you naked for the first time and HAS TO ask about the scars? Happens to me all the time, and it always kills my sexy mood.
First Descents. Join us in a wild adventure celebrating being alive. (Assuming you are in the US. And think whitewater rafting or skiing or hiking the CO Bluebells sounds fun.)
Kate –
Thank you so much for writing this and for having the courage to share your story. huge hugs to you and your special therapy dog!
I had thyroid cancer when I was 19. There is a very high survival rate for papillary thyroid cancer (multiple doctors and acquaintances told me that if I had to choose a cancer this was the one to choose, which was kind of weird and not super comforting because for me getting cancer was more of a large, insistent message that I had no control over my body and health) and I never had chemo (two surgeries and radioactive iodine) and so it also feels weird to call myself a “cancer survivor”.
When I had surgery my mom came up to my city and cleaned my apartment for me while I was recovering. Then later she got out of a speeding ticket while driving home by crying to a police officer about how her daughter had cancer. So really it was a win win.
Wow, Meg, I have the same story. Thyroid cancer at 19. Doctors telling me this was the best kind of cancer to get. I never tell people I had cancer because I feel like I have to give a disclaimer: “oh, it was only thyroid cancer.” Not knowing how to think about cancer races where survivors run and wear t-shirts. So bizarre. I also had a friend in college, who had had very serious childhood cancer, tell me that I obviously hadn’t processed my experience if I was so casual and minimizing. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. I mean, mastitis was 200x worse than cancer, in my experience!
Thanks for sharing.
Hi, Kate. I got cancer (melanoma) at 22 when I was living in D.C. I didn’t do chemo either. My parents came out to meet me, several times. I have a big scar on my arm. Our experiences aren’t the same, obviously, but I’ve been trying to write about what happened to me for a while now. I haven’t quite gotten there yet. But reading your piece is a huge relief, and a deep pain at the same time — I’m sorry that you had to go through this. I wish neither of us had had to. But we did, so thank you for writing what you did. Thank you for sharing this.
(Also — I agree, dogs are the very very best. I’m glad you have one there with you. And if you’re still in D.C.? Hit me up [@fruitbatalie on twitter] and we can form a very chill, TV-watching, non-support group, if you like!)
Natalie!
It took me a long time to be able to really find the right words, but once they came they wouldn’t stop. Hopefully you reach that point soon. I’m so glad you’re here, that we’re both here, and that we’re making it through.
(I am still here! If you would like a very large lab mix to lick your hands/feet/legs or a friend to binge-watch almost anything with, I am available!)
Wonderful — just DM’d you on Twitter! 🙂
Hi Kate,
Thank you so much for sharing your inspiring story with us.Mothers are best human beings in this world.Nobody in this world love us as much as our mother does and none of the love in this world is as true as a mother’s love.
And between shoutout for the dog.Sometimes we feels like animals are so much caring and loving than human beings.