Tag Archive for Pancreatic cancer

March awareness of everything but blue

March 4, 2010 cancer, survivorship 6 comments

March is colorectal cancer awareness month. Leading up to each March I go back and forth in forum conversations with people who want this year to be the year the world experiences some sort of magical CRC awareness miracle. While awareness is growing, there is of course no miracle. There are only faces – mine, yours, someone you met at your kid’s school or your neighbor or a relative.

Friday March 5 is ‘Dress in Blue Day’ across the US, when people dress in blue to show their solidarity with CRC advocates in raising awareness. There are a couple of cool videos of me out on the ‘net, dressed in blue and filmed in early 2009, telling my survivor story to Colon Cancer News. And I’ll wear blue again this Friday. Later this month, I’ll participate in C3′s 2010 Call on Congress, meeting with my senators and representative to discuss bills which provide screening for colon and rectal cancers. It’s the first year since diagnosis that I don’t have either scans or surgeries or recovery at this time, the first year I’ve ever gotten the chance to go. I’m excited and a little nervous and I can’t wait.

But today, I saw a message on Twitter about someone sponsoring a giveaway this week to benefit the Komen foundation and breast cancer advocacy. And me, the person who’s always maintained that advocacy and science don’t care what color awareness ribbon you wear, found myself thinking “By the goddess – you’ve already got October! March is colorectal cancer’s month!”

Before the hate mail starts – I’ve got breasts (both of them.) I do regular self-exams and have had mammograms on schedule (more or less) ever since I turned 40 (skipped them while doing active chemo, because they aren’t reliable then.) My paternal aunt and three of my cousins (her daughters) have all dealt personally with breast cancer. My oldest cousin died of recurrent mBC. Her youngest sister, positive for the BRCA genes, had a prophylactic double mastectomy. I get breast cancer awareness, people – I support it and I’ve even donated my writing services to Komen foundation fund-raising efforts.

But I’ve got a thought – maybe radical, but hear me out.

To truly raise awareness, we need to let the individual cancers assigned to months other than October shine. We need to get the pink-wash out of the center spotlight for 11 of the 12 months of the year, so that we can have a shot at raising awareness for the other cancers that kill people – lung cancer, the #1 killer of both men and women in this country; colon, rectal and anal cancers, which are the #2 cancers that kill both men and women, gynecologic cancers, prostate cancer, lymphoma, pancreatic, esophageal cancers.

Each of these cancers needs their time in the spotlight if we are ever going to successfully raise awareness. But to focus on these other cancers, we need to stop the pink madness, the saturation of pink year-round, the promotions from November to May for May’s country-wide Races for the Cure, and then the promotions from June through October for October’s breast cancer awareness events. Is it too much to ask for the center spotlight in the months that aren’t May or October? Is it too much to ask that the promotions designed to raise breast cancer awareness let some of the other cancers have their chance in the spotlight, their awareness months without fighting for air time and ‘net space or having their colors diluted by pink?

Cancer doesn’t care about the color of your awareness ribbon – but people do. And it’s people who need to be made more aware that colorectal cancers, lung cancer, gyn cancers, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, brain cancer and other cancers are as much or more likely to be fatal and to affect larger populations than BC.

So, with all due respect – stay out of my blue month, okay? I’ve got some awareness to raise for the cancer that will affect over 150,000 new patients and kill more than 50,000 men and women this year.

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The reluctant (cancer) warrior

September 20, 2009 cancer, survivorship 6 comments
Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze via last.fm

The metaphors for cancer and I do not see eye to eye.
I’ve been a person working for peace since the early 70s; it’s been uncomfortable at best to be cast in the role of cancer ‘warrior,’ fighting tooth and nail (or even better, to the death) against the faceless mortal enemy, cancer.

The metaphors get worse whenever someone famous dies of cancer. See, I said it — dies of cancer. Plain words, plain English, for a plain fact of life — that life ends in death, and that all too often, those of us with Stage IV cancers die of our cancers. See, if we died in a natural disaster, THAT would be news. But dying of cancer is the eventuality, the reality for most stage IV patients. Maybe that’s why the news-gatherers try to pretty up the language.

Lost his/her battle…
Fought hard, but in the end lost…
Never quit fighting…
Was a fighter to the end…
In the war on cancer…

I’ve struggled sometimes to find the right language to describe what this is for me. I’m not ‘fighting’ my cancer — literally. I am not in treatment right now, but on very strict monitoring to ensure that I stay disease-free (NED.) I fight with my emotions, I fight with chemo side effects, I fight with the lingering issues from my surgical recovery — but I am living with cancer. I am dancing with cancer. The only relevant argument in that is ‘who leads?’

Living with cancer. Until the day that I’m dying with cancer.
But I am no cancer warrior.

The true cancer warriors are the healthcare professionals and the scientists who work every day to try to get a handle on treatment protocols. These warriors fight constantly for the tools they need to invent new and better methods of killing the cancer cells in my body. They are taking up what they have to create arms, they are trying to destroy cancer.

Me? I just put their most efficacious drug-weapons into my body, and go to sleep.
Hopefully, when I wake up, cancer cells are dead or dying. It’s the Star Trek neutral zone approach to conflict. I don’t/can’t intervene in the conflict within my cells except by showing up in infusion or radiation or for surgery — or not. But showing up is the extent of my strategy, my single show of strength, the only card I’ve got in the game. I have no war-room, no way to stage a covert offensive or a coup. Cancer isn’t that definable an enemy. If this is a war, then it’s far more like a war on terror — a war on the unseen and undefinable — than it is a war on something concrete.

Wouldn’t it be less painful and less bloody if every war could be fought like that–in our sleep, no casualties but cell communities?

Patrick Swayze died this week from complications due to Stage IV pancreatic cancer. It brought out a rash of new warrior and battle metaphors for cancer, and those of us who are living with it. Maybe Swayze would have welcomed the metaphors that make him a cancer warrior, but all of the battle-warrior metaphors to describe cancer survivors, people living with cancer, just left me battle-weary. They reminded me again of how reluctant I am to be in that role

As I watched a clip of Swayze in Dirty Dancing, I was struck by the leonine grace of the man. Sure, he could throw a punch or a kick (have you ever seen Road House?) But the mental clip I have of him is not armed and dangerous, off to fight a faceless enemy. I will always see him as that tightly controlled, lion-like dancer, poised to hunt and to pounce and dancing through his life.

I have ofen called this my dance with cancer, and if that’s what this is, then Swayze is the visual embodiment of dancing with cancer. He lived boldly, comfortable in his own skin, understanding that he couldn’t kill the cancer but determined to live his life anyway. If he was dancing with cancer, no question he was leading. And at the end, he didn’t lose any battle. He lived boldly, as he wanted to live.

Then he died of complications related to stage IV pancreatic cancer. He died as he lived, with power and grace. Leading his personal dance with cancer. No warrior metaphors needed.

Do you like the battle metaphors for cancer, the idea of being a cancer warrior? Do you see living with cancer as a war? What is the cancer metaphor that works for you?

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