I'm Not Great, I Just Have Cancer

Rachel K. is a 32-year-old mother of two, a scientist and is battling a rare form of cancer that initially originated in her appendix. Since her diagnosis just after her 29th birthday, she has undergone multiple surgeries (including a complete hysterectomy) and multiple rounds of chemo as the cancer has spread throughout her abdomen.

Earlier this year, she learned the cancer has spread to her lungs. As she explores different treatment options, she's started a blog to help keep her large support team of friends and family updated about her treatment, particularly for those days she's too exhausted to talk to everyone. She also wants to create a lasting diary for her two young children.

Rachel also hopes to connect with other cancer patients on this same journey, particularly mothers of young children.

She took her blog's title from her new motto in life: Celebrate Everything. Click here to read more posts from Rachel.

With Rachel's permission, we will be regularly sharing her updates here on Women Playing For T.I.M.E.

After my last two posts I heard from a lot of people and many of them used the same word over and over again – inspiration.  I thank you for applying such a lofty term to me (which makes me a bit uncomfortable), but it really started me thinking about why people place this term on people going through a cancer diagnosis. 

I think, perhaps, the cancer just gives me a voice that reaches many more people.  After all, my thoughts and behaviors haven’t changed that much since I was diagnosed with cancer.  Not that I’m not appreciative, but what have I really done that makes me such an inspiration?  I think, perhaps, we, as a society, throw this term around with too much ease and not enough appreciation for what it really means.  I wonder if we ever really look deeply at who inspires us and why.

First off, having cancer should not automatically make someone inspirational.  I’m really not all that great, I just have cancer.  I’d rather be a less inspirational person than an inspirational person just because I had a few cells in my appendix go rogue.  I didn’t choose this cancer and this has never been a blessing in disguise.  It has always been just cancer.   If you think it’s such a blessing, then you take it!  If I could give it back and live a life in which I am more selfish and less aware of the people who love me I would take it.  Because, honestly, I think I was a generally good person before cancer and I loved deeply and knew love from those around me. 

Cancer has increased the degree to which that love is demonstrated, but it has also increased the degree to which we all feel sorrow and fear and loss.  Cancer may take my life and the increase in demonstrative love is not worth my life – I had a great family before cancer and I knew it.  Perhaps more people know how wonderful my family is now due to my cancer, but I’m still a bit selfish.  I would take the knowledge of my family’s greatness away from others if it would take away my cancer and give me back my life.

Additionally, I don’t believe it when cancer patients say they wouldn’t change a thing for this reason or that.  I would completely change many things about my diagnosis.  First off, I would have my appendix removed at a very young age!  I would never choose cancer!  No one really would!  And maybe that’s why I think just being unlucky enough to have cancer is not good enough to make someone an inspiration.  Because at the heart of being an inspiration I feel a choice must be involved.  A choice to make a difference in the world, a choice to change who we are inside, or just a choice to handle a difficult situation (such as cancer) with strength, dignity, continued happiness and grace.  Maybe the choices I have made in handling cancer are inspirational, but so are so many choices that other people make as well.

There a lot of people who inspire me; the biggest one being my children, although they don’t really choose to do anything other than to be my lifeline.  They are the reason I continue to fight and the reason I choose to live my life in happiness.  They deserve a mom who does what the other mothers do, including volunteer in their classrooms, cheer at their soccer games, plan birthday parties and have a positive outlook about their life and future.  Being depressed and sad doesn’t do them any good so I choose not to do it.  They will always be my inspiration to continue this fight.

Now, I’ll put the sentimental stuff aside and focus on who else inspires me.  There are people in our everyday lives who we rarely think about who should inspire us.  I am in awe of Mrs. K. Hoffman, my son’s kindergarten teacher.  She seems to have a limitless supply of patience and strength in dealing with a classroom full of miniature hoodlums (my affectionate term for my son and his friends!).  She can stand in front of the classroom and multitask with our future in a way that leaves me taking mental notes for my own future usage.  Who knew a quietly hummed, “Bump, ba-da-da-da” could bring an entire room of five-year olds to silence?  The teaching of sight words is seamlessly intertwined with answering random questions about the color of her sweater, assenting to the use of the bathroom, administering mild discipline to the disruptive child, instructing a child to stop tapping their neighbor on the head, directing traffic to the correct colored square to park their butt on, praising the yelled out random recognition of the aforementioned sight word on a school flyer while gently reminding the use of raising our hands when desiring to communicate, and handing the parent volunteer a package of papers to hang up for vibrant display in the hallway. 

This is all accomplished in about one minute without breaking a sweat or displaying a loss of patience with this daily process.  To make it all the more amazing she chooses to get up the next day and do it again and the next day and the next year and the next twenty years.  Teachers who choose to work with our children and continue to do it with patience, caring and smiles are inspiring.

One of the most inspiring people I know is my sister Sarah. She is a social worker with the Department of Children and Youth in rural PA.  The emotional trauma and heartbreak she sees everyday would bring the average person to their knees.  She sees the worst of the worst and it always involves children.  She tries her best to protect children who many of us don’t ever see or acknowledge – children who are sexually and physically abused, children who are neglected, children who are not loved by the adults around them.  She has had children she has cared about die and she has had to return children to parents who she wouldn’t give her dogs to because the system says she has to. 

Her work is so draining that I can hear the tears she is suppressing, feel the weight upon her shoulders, at the end of long day when she calls and says, “Tell me about your day.  I just need to talk about something else for a while.”  She works in a system that ties her hands, refuses to give her the support and backing she needs and blames her when she is unable to complete the paperwork obstacles they place in her way.  She works in a society that displays their lack of caring for the children who need society the most by refusing to pay her a livable wage (she lives in a “bad” part of her town because she can’t afford to live somewhere better), refusing to acknowledge its own failures (she is reprimanded for not completing paperwork fast enough even though she carries a caseload more than twice the size that is recommended), and refusing to change a failing system. 

Her department acknowledges a need for three to four more case workers in order to adequately cover the amount of cases that need managed (at one point Sarah was the only one) but the county won’t increase the salary enough to entice new social workers or keep the ones they do manage to somehow hire.  In response to the lack of employees, the department gives all of the work to the few who choose to remain and tells them it all has to be covered because regulations say so and if it’s not covered the social worker is liable if anything happens to a child, the mountain of required paperwork that comes with each case all has to be completed in a timely fashion or you will be reprimanded, and you have to choose between meeting these demands or letting a child remain unsupervised in a potentially unsafe situation. 

Sarah and her co-workers/friends choose to return to this ungrateful, emotionally and physically draining, unreasonable work environment day after day because to them it’s not about the work.  It is about the children.  If they didn’t do it, who would?  (I have to give a shout-out to my brother-in-law, Conrad, who is also a social worker with children and youth in MA).  They should inspire you.        

When Matt and I went to California for a week we took a trip down Highway 1 to Monterrey.  Along the way we passed acres and acres of farmland blooming with the fresh fruits and vegetables we eat every day.  Eventually we came upon a field of strawberries covered with migrant workers.  They were hunched over hand-picking this delicious fruit.  I took the time to really think about those workers and what they were doing. When I take my kids strawberry picking I can last about ten to fifteen minutes bent over, picking berries, before I am uncomfortable, my knees and back ache and I am done with this one little adventure.  Migrant workers choose to spend day after day, eight hours a day, in the same uncomfortable position in order to bring home minimum wage for themselves and their family.  I can’t imagine that many of us would choose to do that?  It should inspire you.

Doctors and nurses get a lot of thanks for the work they do and the people they help (as they should), but you know who I find really inspiring in a hospital?  The nurses’ aide.  You can’t begin to imagine the things they have to do (and clean up)! And most of the time they do it in a friendly manner.  To choose that profession and then choose to be happy while doing it takes a lot of strength and character.  They should inspire you.  

Inspiration can be found all around us.  It shouldn’t take cancer for people to be able to make realizations about themselves and their life and then change based on that.  We all have the choice inside of us.  Anyone can choose to do inspirational things.  I challenge you to look around and recognize who else in your community and your life that is choosing to do things that inspire you.  Tell them, they will appreciate it!  You might be surprised at what and who you find!

Want to learn more about Rachel's story? Check out her previous posts:

-- How Music Brought Me Back to Life

-- Good-bye Chemo, My Frenemy