Life After Cancer

I said it recently, and I'll say it again: Mary Elizabeth Williams is the best around around when it comes to describing the cancer experience. A staff writer for Salon.com, Williams is dealing with stage 4 melanoma, and writes regularly about her experiences. Most recently, she wrote about her participation in an immunotherapy trial that seems to have done its job, and her cancer seems to be in remission.

(And yes, I'm purposely hedging on all of that, because I don't want to jinx her.)

Her most recent article is called "Now What? Life After Cancer Treatment," where she discusses some of the emotional difficulties of getting positive news.

And it is hard, for lots of reasons, to get the good news. It's a new beginning, but a scary one -- you feel like you're on your own, in some ways. It's easier to be a cancer patient, surrounded by doctors and nurses and medicines, than it is to be a survivor. Williams, in her excellent prose, puts it: "There’s something pretty comforting about watching the drugs go in and knowing that they’re doing the fighting for me. This is the beginning of finding out how much my body can do on its own. It’s not exactly flying without a net, but it does represent a different and scary level of autonomy."

There's a kind of survivor's guilt, too, as you think about others that haven't been so lucky.

But mostly there's the worry that it will come back. That's the hardest part.

"Cancer is part of me now. It’s part of all of us who’ve experienced it, whether we call ourselves survivors or continue to grope, as I do, for a word that makes sense of this new place. How can I call myself a “survivor” when I will spend the rest of my life monitored and tested, a veteran who knows all too well that another deployment could be as close as the next CT scan? We cancer vets live daily with our cancer — in the scars on our bodies, the memories of the people who were kind when we needed help, and the way that we can never again take for granted what a gift it is to make plans."

I don't know if it's better or worse to have Follicular NHL, and just expect that it's coming back. In some ways, that sucks. But in other ways, accepting it and being at peace with it makes it easier.

I wish Williams well.  I want her to be around to keep writing about this stuff so well.