Survivorship

Suleika Jaouad, the young woman who writes the New York Times column Life, Interrupted, offered a new installment yesterday called "Am I a Cancer Survivor?" She brings up an interesting question, one without easy answers.

Jaouad is about three months out from a bone marrow transplant. She was at a Rally for Life, when all survivors were invited on stage, and then on to the track for a Survivors Lap. She hesitated about whether to step forward.

An understandable problem: she doesn't feel like a survivor, given where she is in her cancer journey (I don't think I like that phrase, but I can't think of another way to put it right now). She thinks taking on the label Survivor feels like she's saying it's been conquered. I've been told the same thing -- the Magical Five Year Mark means survivorship.

 But, as a friend points out to her, anyone who ever had cancer and is still around is a survivor, no matter how long it's been since they heard the words -- ten years or ten minutes. As the friend said to her, "blunty," "A cancer survivor would be someone who a) has cancer and b) is not dead." This fits the definition of "Survivor" offered by the National Cancer Survivors Day organizers.

And it's the one I believe in, too. I've heard plenty of objections, and I'd never force a label on any current or post-treatment cancer patient (see how I avoided the word there?), but for me, anyone who has heard those words form a doctor has already earned the badge. They deserve something to commemorate their service. (And I could write 10,000 words on the whole "war" metaphor for cancer, too. Maybe another blog entry some other time.)

And I know just how Jaouad feels, from a slightly different perspective. She's been through a very aggressive treatment, and doesn't feel like she's a survivor. I spent two years without having any treatment at all, and sometimes questioned just how much "surviving" I'd done. Even after the relatively benign treatment of Rituxan, I'd sometimes compare myself to people who had been through much harsher stuff, and wonder if I could be in the same category.

But there's an emotional component to cancer, one that's there no matter how many treatments, or what kind, or when. And that's really what survivorship is all about: dealing with the day-to-day emotional and mental struggles, as well as the physical ones. The scars can be just as deep, the pain just as intense.

So I say Jaouad is a survivor. Because she got out of bed this morning.