Political Metastasis

There’s not a lot I can say about the 2016 election that hasn’t already been said. One might argue that I shouldn’t say anything about it, because this is a blog about living with chronic illness, not a blog about politics or current affairs. However, there is a very important reason why I need to discuss the election here: This space is also dedicated to advocating for the rights and dignity of people with disabilities and illnesses, and while those rights and dignity are potentially under attack for the next four years, I will not shy away from the ethical challenges ahead. I will be as political as I need to be to stand up for what I believe.

Before we must face those ethical challenges here, though, I want to take some time to consider the psychological and emotional implications of this election for so many people who disagree with it - for roughly half of the country, to be fair. Somewhere in the countless personal accounts and policy analyses I’ve read over the last two weeks, I ran across the metaphor that the election of Donald Trump feels like a cancer diagnosis.

Let that sink in for a moment. My first instinct was to take issue at what I thought was a false equivalence. But when I thought about it more, I realized that it perfectly describes my own inner turmoil and heartache at the results of the election. Shock, despair, anger, hopelessness, fear, dread, resolve, adrenaline, and renewed passion. In many ways, it is as if I am living through my own cancer diagnosis again, with a totally different scope and context. It is just as terrifying and heartbreaking as my diagnosis with stage IV pancreatic cancer in January 2016, and no, you don’t get to tell me that I’m being melodramatic or a sore loser. Individual experience is an inalienable right. And I believe there are plenty of others out there who feel that they, too, are living through their own metaphorical cancer diagnoses right now, so I want to give them the space to process their own grief.

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Suddenly, you get the news that your life is in danger. Maybe you had a feeling something was wrong for a while, maybe you had a sense of foreboding. Or maybe you had no warning signs whatsoever, and you were totally prepared for joyful news - a hoped-for pregnancy, or a doctor’s clearance to return to work or go on that trip you’ve been dreaming of. But instead, your doctor tells you that things are much worse, and you must take immediate action to try to save your life, your well-being. This is urgent, you can’t wait to start fighting back against this threat - there isn’t even time to harvest your eggs before chemo, because your disease is metastatic, inoperable. You have options, but none of them are enticing, and all of them promise to be hard, harder than anything else you’ve ever done - and you’ve been through a lot already, you’ve fought hard just to get to this point in one piece.

You have a day or two, maybe a week if you’re lucky, to process, to let it all sink in, and to make that crucial decision about how to proceed. As you process, you realize that a piece of your heart is missing, that some bit of your core self has been torn out and thrown away. You want to look for it everywhere, but you know it’s a lost cause, it’s already destroyed. Maybe you can slowly build some new little core piece to fill part of that void, but the wound will always be there. You will never forget how much this hurts, how deep the pain cuts. And the disorientation of it all - it’s a fever dream, a nightmare you can’t wake from no matter how hard you pinch yourself. All you want to do is duck your head under the covers and deny it all, pretend it never happened, lose yourself in inane videos of babies and dogs on YouTube, look at pretty curated hipster pictures on Instagram. But that’s only delaying the reckoning, and it doesn’t really make you feel much better because you can’t forget the truth, not even for a second.

You wonder what the next few years will be like - if you even have a few years. You’ve never faced such a challenge before, so you have no idea what to expect. But you have inklings, snippets of other people’s experiences that have stuck in your memory. You tell your friends that if you have to do chemo, you’re going to start smoking pot and wearing turbans, like a classy broad who doesn’t take shit. But the side effects your new doctor told you about are so terrifying, you can’t comprehend them: peripheral neuropathy, crippling nausea, decimated blood counts. And the hair loss that is surely to come, it won’t be pretty. How will you ever feel good about yourself again, when it seems the world is against you, your life has been reduced to a potential, a shaky prognosis? You already don’t feel like yourself anymore.

The unpredictability is startling. Sure, life is never really predictable, but at least in the past, you could make plans and generally see them through. Now you wonder if you’ll ever be able to go on a vacation again, because you have to save up all your leave time for sick time, and who knows how long you’ll last anyway? Will you ever get to become a mother, will you make it to your ten year college reunion, will you get to grow old with your spouse in peace? If you have to spend the next few years of your life, possibly all the time you have left, fighting for your very existence, where will the joy be? How will you ever be able to leave the house without doubting your ability to make it back in one piece? How will you go out in public and trust strangers again, without constantly wondering if they’re staring at you, and whether it’s pity or disgust in their eyes? Will you get to have fun, and what will that fun look like, if you’re constantly worried, anxious, afraid? Will your happiness be stolen from you altogether?

But then, miraculously, in the middle of all this despair and heartbreak and fearful panic, you realize that people are loving you. Sure, some people only say the wrong thing and continually make you feel worse, like this is your fault, or you’re stupid to be so scared, or grieving won’t help anything, or you’re doing it all wrong. But other people are showing you just how wonderful humanity can be. They’re coming out of the woodwork to say they’re with you, no matter what. They’re showing up, listening, looking you straight in the eye, and saying, “this sucks.” They get it. They’re scared too, they’re sad too. But the way to get through this, the only way that stands a chance, is together, with passion and the courage of your convictions. You hold tight to the hand of the person who is always at your side, the one who loves you no matter how bad things get, the one who understands your pain and admires your conviction. And together, you step forward.

You open your mouths and speak the truth. You make the hard decisions and take it one day at a time. You stand up for yourself, your right to live, your eternal dignity. You hold tight to what you know to be true. You resolve that even if you will be reduced to a statistic and ground down to nothing before your time, you will cherish every minute you have left. You will stand up for your principles, the things that make you you, the things that bring you joy, and you will live your best life. Because no one, nothing, not even cancer, can extinguish that flame.​​