Cancer as A Gift
By Katie Delahaye Paine
Forty-five years ago, when I was 8, my parents put my cats to sleep and I remember clearly thinking that was the worst thing that would ever happen. The perspective of an 8-year old is amazing, isn’t it?
Twenty years ago when I got divorced, I thought that was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. The perspective of a thirty year old isn’t much better. But now I can look at my ex-husband and say “what was I thinking”?
Six years ago when my house burned down, I thought that was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. Now I look around my new house and think, “what a great place, and sure, I miss my stuff, but its just stuff, and this new house enables me to do so much more of the things I want to do, like celebrate my friends weddings and birthdays and host benefits for causes I believe in. Amazing how much more perspective the years bring.
Two years ago, when they found a suspicious spot on my mammogram, I thought, oh god, if I have cancer that would be the worst thing that I could imagine happening to me. So when my doctor said “I’m not even going to do a biopsy because if it came back negative I wouldn’t believe it,” I just assumed my world was coming to an end.
Once again, I can look back on that day and say “What was I thinking?”
In fact, my new life was just beginning. Going thru the cancer/chemo/radiations experience was in many ways a gift, just as any other major life-changing experience is a gift.
The first gift I got was the bond I shared with so many, too many other cancer survivors. The day after I got out of the hospital, I had a scheduled call with a major prospective client, Hewlett-Packard. Lying on my back, taking notes on the back of my hospital release form, I convinced them to hire me to help set up a PR measurement program. Most people wouldn’t sign on for $50,000 assignment right before start chemo, but “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog” – they also don’ t know you have cancer.
So when the client called and said I absolutely had to be out there to sell the program to her boss on April 12th, I said okay. THEN I noticed that it was two days after my second scheduled chemo treatment. But I figured I had about a two-day window before the chemo really hit me, so I slapped my wig on, flew out in the morning, did my presentation, won the account, and flew back on the red eye and slept for three days. God forbid they should know anything was up, right? Well I kept this charade up for another two months until once again they wanted me to go out to Palo Alto and I finally had to confess that I had cancer and that I was undergoing radiation treatments and couldn’t travel. My client said “Oh, I totally understand, I have non-hodgkins lymphoma, did you do chemo? “ When I finally did make it out there, we spent most of the meeting talking about our “chemo curls” -- She’s not a client, she’s a fellow survivor and a friend.
The second gift was my “breast friends” support group, without whom I wouldn’t have made it thru the experience. The magic of that group isn’t just that they’re there for you when you’re bald and getting sick, and trying to figure out how to be feminine again, its that YOU’re there for the next person who’s bald, and sick, and trying to figure out how to be feminine. And that makes you feel like its all worthwhile.
Another gift was the renewed connections with so many friends and family. So many of us go thru life getting more and more caught up in work, thinking that the most important thing in life is to get that raise, make that sale, or win that account. You get cancer, and you realize that you’ve got your priorities all wrong. The most important thing in life is getting your health back and keeping healthy, then its your friends and family that keep you healthy and strong. And somewhere down the list is that account, that raise, that sale. And somewhere above that account, that raise that sale, is the importance of giving back.
That’s one more gift I got. I think it may be some extra ingredient they put in those chemo-drugs, but for some reason, everyone who has ever gone thru this experience seems to feel a greater need to give back to their communities -- Whether it’s the community of friends and family that helped them thru the experience, the community that treated them, or the community of fellow survivors. I know I did. I HATE asking people for money, but when I got the notice for Relay for Life, I thought – what the heck, lets at least ask. Imagine my surprise when the money started flowing in. And do you know who my biggest supporter was, that ex-husband I mentioned earlier. Who knew?? The lesson there, another gift, is that people really do want to help, you just have to ask.
That’s what happened when I decided to try to raise a little more money with a concert. I figured that not everyone wanted to walk, run, pedal or paddle to raise money. Some people might just want to sit, and enjoy some music and raise money. So we asked some friends, and sure enough they all said yes. And the next thing we knew we had a day-long schedule of more than two dozen local and nationally recognized musicians all playing for free at the first ever Seacoast Concert for a Cure. We’ve raised more than $50,000 from two concerts, and as a result we’ve started a whole new program called “Fill the Gap” that helps women from when they first are told of a potential cancer diagnosis to when they are part of the medical process.
Another gift that I got from having cancer is realizing that it is not a death sentence. Survival rates are increasing every year. As my friend Crescentia True will tell you, as long as we keep raising money at events like the Relay for Life and the Concert for a Cure, there will be new treatments and new hope.
When I was done with my treatment, my oncologist Eric Winer at Dana Farber told me, don’t worry, if it comes back in five years we will have found the cure.” I believe him, because I believe that determined women will make it happen.
Visit Katie Paine at KDPaine.blogs.com
Copyright ©2006 Sure Woman.com/Copyright ©2006 Dawn Prince
Back To The Cover
Breast Cancer Journeys
