Cancer Story

I don’t know how to write about cancer, how to write about this most harrowing and universal human experience. 

It seems most people have a cancer story or more. Or a devastating illness story. Health is the exception, and it is precious, and if it gets taken for granted, it’s only because it is there to be taken for granted. If you can’t take it for granted, it isn’t there. (This last observation is my husband’s). 

So, if I tell you my story, I’m pretty sure it will sound a lot like yours. 

When your loved one falls ill, the aftermath is as sharp and absolute as a landscape altered by severe seismic activity. With cancer in particular, you never stop dreading the aftershocks. There are so many. After the therapies, the withering side effects. After the surgeries, the unforeseen complications. After the PET scans, the ongoing surveillance. 

Michael says this was all harder on me than on him. Nuh-huh. Not a chance. I didn’t get stabbed with nephrostomy tubes, needles and knives, I didn’t get pumped full of radioactive materials and a litany of medications. Our months together of joint sleeplessness – those were easy, my love. No, I lied. They were, indeed, the hardest time of our lives – certainly of my life. But they were laced with the ease of fight-or-die mode. We did what we had to do, that is all, and there is nothing simpler in life than doing what you must. 

Yes, it was hard. At night, I cried in the shower. In the morning, I double-checked if I’d packed my sunglasses into my work bag. At every bedtime, I was visited by a sharp and recurrent fantasy – Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up and realize this was all a nightmare. Michael never had cancer. He’ll be sleeping softly, without moaning, his cheeks full of color. His body won’t have withered away a good fifty or so pounds. When I reach for his hands, they’ll be warm. 

Here is the good news, my friends, and I am sorry not to get to it quicker – as of now, Michael is healthier than he has been in the last sixteen months. He was initially diagnosed with a high grade, recurrent, aggressive, and rare type of cancer. Stage 3. Adenocarcinoma, they called it, which accounts for fewer than 2% of all bladder cancers. A kind of cancer that doesn’t promise to respond well to chemo. 

As of now, Michael is NED (no evidence of disease). 

Our story, so far, is a success story, and it is also a love story. At every turn, it was me for whom Michael worried the most, as I did for him. He did what he had to do, and I did what I had to do, and regardless of what he might tell you, it wasn’t harder for me. He is my ostomy warrior, my LIVE HARD man, my endurer and warper of difficult things. 

We have so many friends who have known the horror. To ALL of our friends, we send eternal gratitude and boundless love. 

– Fleur (Suzanne) and Michael

P.S. The following video was taken 4-22-22, at the hospital, right after Michael’s surgery. 

5-27-23