What Is Christmas for a Cancer Patient?
Everything I do now is marked by cancer milestones, and most of mine just happen to coincide with the holiday season.
Diagnosed in October, surgery on Halloween, chemo in December, losing my hair on Christmas, the hospital on New Year’s Eve, the list goes on. Each holiday season doesn’t just mark a passage of time, it marks one step further from cancer, one step closer to a life. Collect five Christmases and go straight to survivorhood! But as my oncologist recently reminded me, your body doesn’t know five years has gone by — your cancer will either return or it won’t. Like Schrodinger’s cat, cancer patients must exist in both worlds.
My first Christmas with cancer was perhaps the easiest. When you’re fighting for your life, in and out of chemo infusion centers and hospitals, there’s a freedom to the struggle. You’re quickly given the gift of gratitude, happy to simply spend time with family. Presents don’t matter, only TIME does. Hugs and conversation far outweigh any monetary value of the holiday season. You want for nothing because you realize friends and family are all that you need. You hug your loved ones tighter and never want to let go.
The second Christmas was harder. Short hair and a new body, 40 lbs missing, but no battle to attend. The armor is rusty and old, disintegrating around you. The holiday marks a passing of time, but carries a feeling of melancholy with a sprinkle of the macabre as you wonder to yourself, “Will this be my last Christmas?” or even “How many Christmases do I have left?” You’re not sure what to do with yourself or how to move on. The wound is too fresh. The fear is still a constant.
The third Christmas feels like the start of a new life. You may look “normal again” because the scars are all hidden. A port covered by the bulky sweater, the radical hysterectomy scar only visible in the summer with a very skimpy bikini, the white blood cell count only seen on a lab report. Friends and family are so happy that you’re “all better now.” But you don’t feel better, you feel scared. You’re still haunted by recurrence — that five-year window you’re desperate to break free from — and you still wear a mask everywhere you go. No Christmas parties, no indoor events, you’re isolated from the joy of the season, except with close friends and family (after they’ve submitted to rapid Covid tests of course). But luckily you still feel that sense of gratitude, simply to be alive. A feeling you never want to take for granted.
The fourth Christmas, for me, is now. Cancer feels quite far away, except for the side effects and limitations that have stayed with me (and continuous doctor appointments).
Some days I feel strong, others I feel weak. I was sick for three weeks in October and finally started to feel better by Thanksgiving. The cycle of a low immune system is exhausting. You feel as if you’re constantly on the precipice of falling into a deep dark hole. I also have noticed a sense of loss, like something is missing inside me and I can’t quite figure it out. What’s my purpose? Why am I here? Why did I survive, when so many don’t?
Don’t get me wrong, I feel so lucky to be alive. But now that my future — or the idea that I have a future — seems clearer I have to ask myself … what now? Like a soldier who has been away for four years, the world has changed. Did I age four years or twenty? Or will I perpetually be 34, frozen at the age of diagnosis? A part of me is angry at how much of my “youth” was taken — from both cancer and menopause. I can’t remember what 35 was like, it’s all a blur of post-chemotherapy recovery. I can’t remember my 36th birthday, it’s completely blacked out. Nor can I remember Thanksgiving 2019 or 2020. Pieces of me are missing, lost to the trauma response of cancer. In my body’s effort to protect me from the pain, I can hardly recall chemo. I remember the migraines, the nausea, the pain, but only in one single memory as if it happened over just one day — not 6 months of brutal days and nights.
I was recently snowboarding, one of my favorite hobbies, and a Facebook memory popped up on my phone: December 9, 2019, my “first day of chemo”. Only now, on this December 9th, I was heading down the slopes, rocking back and forth on my board across blues and blacks, freer than I’ve ever felt.
Which got me to thinking, that maybe we’re not meant to move on from cancer, maybe it changes us permanently — but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Snowboarding with a port makes me feel strong. It reminds me anything is possible after you face death. That we still have so much life to live, for however long we have.
Maybe Christmas doesn’t have to be a reminder of pain, but a testament to how far we’ve come, how lucky we are, and how much love we have to give.
***
Hi! I’m Taryn, I was diagnosed with high-grade small cell neuroendocrine cancer in 2019, stage 3C. With a 7% chance of survival, I did everything I could to beat cancer and now I help other cancer patients on their journeys. Check me out on IG and TikTok [@] TheAntiCancerLife.
