The wildfire

One of the greatest flaws we humans have is thinking that we have control of so much more than we do. That we can fix it if it breaks, that we can get ahead of anything….dramatic.

But life can be a lot more like a wildfire than it is like anything else. A small spark suddenly incinerates a life you knew, one you thought was totally under your command. The flames leap from one place to another, out of control and the damage spreads. The fire burns, brightly, violently, until it’s ready to give up, to let go.

For every wildfire, though, for every huge thing that sweeps the ground out from under your feet and razes it all down, a flicker of life starts again, in amongst the ashes. It might take time, or space, or careful cultivation, but eventually a sparkle of something new takes root and what you’re growing becomes more important than what was lost.

This year was my wildfire.

It started easily enough. A small question. An easy to prescribe test. Some more tests, and then, the empty, noiseless pause as my doctor relayed the worst news I’d ever heard. “You have cancer” is a wildfire, burning bright, and when you discover it, you don’t even know how to even begin fighting it back and beating it down. You are unprepared for the viciousness with which it consumes everything in its path.

As everyone talks about their last good pre-pandemic day, I remember this. Just over a year ago, a split second before lockdown, I sat, nervously trying not to look nervous in a mostly empty waiting room. I felt out of place, sitting amongst a handful of seniors, like I had accidentally stumbled into the wrong part of the hospital. The butterflies fluttered in the pit of my stomach as I listened to the receptionist say, over and over, “good morning, cancer centre, how can I help you?”

An ultrasound, a “routine follow up” after a mammogram I wouldn’t have had, save for my doctor’s willingness to listen, and investigate, ratcheted my nerves up a level, to a tension I hadn’t felt before. The technician had already told me they’ll do a repeat scan for pretty much anything, but still. my gut knew something was not right.

When my name was called, I shed my clothes, donned the blue hospital gown I didn’t yet know would become my uniform for months to come, and waited, cold, and alone, in the holding room.

After I left that day, I went home and finished packing for the first trip my family would take after two stressful, awful years and wondered what else was to come. For the next week I dipped my toes in the ocean and built sand castles with my three year old but lay awake at night worrying that something bad was afoot.

I was not wrong.

What followed was a year of the best medical care I hope I will ever need. A year of despair and anguish. A year of physical and mental challenges I had never expected. The waiting. The walking myself into surgery, alone, again and again. The endless blue gowns. The radiation burns that still linger, like the worst tan lines, all these months later. Deciphering test results on MyChart and the victory laps I took when they were good news and not bad. The virtual shoulders I leaned on in virtual support groups. Trying to do it all, (work, parenting, being human) while feeling every day like it was all burning down around me, going to cancer treatments, alone, not really knowing what happens next. It was the hardest year of my life.

I graduated from my oncologist last month. From three of them, in fact.

My medical oncologist slipped the idea in there at the end of a “good” exam, with a symptom report that was also “good”, and a look at my latest scans, also good. “I think you’re ready to go it alone,” she said.

I should have been elated. I mean, after the year I’ve had, this messed up horrible wildfire of a year as a cancer patient during a pandemic without well, anyone. This year where I wanted to be able to hug my mom and tell her “I will be ok”, or have a good cry on the shoulders of my friends, well, I should have been dancing out of there popping champagne at the idea of never having to walk those halls again.

But in truth, I felt a bit lost. The last twelve months have been laser focused on incinerating every rogue cell that had been trying to convince my body to turn on itself. Cancer treatment is about surviving but it’s also about burning it all down, and then we can see what’s left among the ashes.

When I walked out of the hospital that day, with my hokey “congratulations! you’ve graduated to wellness beyond cancer” bookmark, past the lineup at screening of those headed to chemo, or radiation visits, or surgery consults, I wasn’t really sure what life….without demanding, active treatment….looked like. I didn’t know who to tell, or even what to say. I wasn’t prepared to start rebuilding a “normal” life now. Not yet, anyway.

The part of cancer treatment that comes after the wildfire has (presumably) finished burning might be the hardest. After the crush of appointments, surgeries, and other treatment, you’re left, looking mostly like your old self, but standing among the ashes of the carefree life you lived before you were sick. People see you as “being done with all that” but you are forever changed.

This year I gained a lot of perspective about what matters when life is otherwise full of uncertainty. And cancer comes with the prize of never-ending uncertainty.

It forced me to reckon with what I could do with my life. Because until months into the process, I didn’t know how much life I had left. The sheer uncertainty of it all made me realize how precious time was. And it made me realize that I wanted to get better, so much better at making it more meaningful.

So, I’ve started to let things go. Sometimes ruthlessly. This was my cancer graduation gift to myself: kindness. I wasn’t always kind to myself before cancer, and certainly not in 2020 (but was anyone?). I slept too little, worked too much, put off things that were important to me. I didn’t say I love you enough to the people that mattered.

But the freedom I felt, getting to live, being “without cancer” after so many days of trying to rid myself of it was powerful. Being kind to myself means I don’t feel any guilt if I quit something that doesn’t give me joy (and I have!). I make time for me, to think, to write, to play music, that I could just never make a priority before. I choose another round of playing superheroes or reading a story with my kid more often over a never ending stream of zoom calls.

No one will remember you for being unhappy, or putting yourself last. There is no victory in “just getting that one last work thing done at 11pm instead of spending time with someone I love,” or “this thing I hate will become tolerable if I just hang in there a little longer.” Maybe it will. Or maybe you could just give yourself the gift of something better right now. Because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

I plan to be around for a long time yet, but if I have to be remembered for something, someday, I want it to be that I was kind to myself (and made time for those I loved). That I made it a point to have happiness and joy in my life, and that settling for less than either was not an option.

My wildfire is different than yours might be. And it was devastating but also a challenge that forced me to recalibrate so much of my life. When your certainty in the world has been burned down to the roots, how do you rebuild? What do you pick? Where do you invest your energy?

I can promise you won’t think about these questions in the same way until something disastrous happens that sets your own world on fire. Because until then, time is infinite, and you are invincible.

But we are all invincible, until we’re not.