Deep breath

The first Facebook post (September 30, 2018)

With the last four newsletters behind us, we are finally caught up and ready to start sharing the old posts from our Facebook group along with new commentary.

Per wrote our very first post and shared it the day before I had my first chemo treatment—I’ll share it first, then let you know what we got right—and what we got wrong.

September 18, 2018—What Per posted:

Two weeks ago our amazing, beautiful Gina was diagnosed out of the blue with advanced Stage IV Colon Cancer with metastatic tumors in her liver.

(Deep Breath.)

It’s scary stuff, and the numbers are beyond daunting, but Gina has always worked her way into the top couple percent of everything she’s ever put her mind to achieving. We expect nothing different when it comes to winning this latest challenge.

Tomorrow morning, she’ll be starting aggressive chemotherapy at Northwestern’s Lurie Cancer Center. They’ll be “throwing the kitchen sink at her” for the next 3-6 months.

Your support, good thoughts, wishes, and prayers for Gina–as well as Nathan, Evelyn, Jack, Delaney and our whole family–are very much needed.

In the meantime, Gina has one very specific request of anyone willing to help. She’s asking friends and family to help her visualize tiny stars flowing through her body and gently taking the cancer away bit-by-bit from her colon, pelvis, and liver. You can let her know that you’re willing to join in on that request by sending star emojis and the like to her phone and into her newsfeed.

We’ve put together a combined team of smart, accomplished oncologists from both The University of Chicago and Northwestern Medical Center. However, if anyone reading this knows someone (or knows someone that knows someone) it the field of colorectal metastatic cancers who would be a good person to consult with about finding the right clinical trials or advanced treatments for when we’ve worked our way through chemotherapy, that would be amazing.

Go Gina, Go.

I love you like crazy.

Let’s Win.

Today’s perspective—what I got wrong:

I smile looking back on Per’s assertion that I had always worked my way into the top percentage of anything I’ve set my mind to achieving, because that’s exactly what I had decided to do: ACHIEVE my way through a cancer diagnosis.

We weren’t sharing it broadly at the time, but a quick Google search four years ago would reveal that there was only about a 10% chance of me making it to five years as a stage 4 colon cancer patient. The fact that I started as inoperable made it even less likely, as evidenced by all the oncologists who were estimating I had a year or two to live with treatment.

Even today, I cannot explain why I never felt doomed by my diagnosis (even though everything I was hearing would give me every right to feel exactly that way). I’d like to think it was my intuition; but if I’m totally honest with myself, it probably had plenty to do with the fact that I really HAD achieved everything I ever put my mind to doing in my past.

And, I mean, I had a plan: By this point, I had finished reading Radical Remission—and met one stage 4 survivor who talked me into the power of supplements, green smoothies, and Chinese medicine—and I was ready to implement a multi-faceted plan to get back to healthy as I received 12 rounds of chemo over the next 3-6 months (also inaccurate—somehow thinking that 12 rounds would take only 6 months, or that my reaction could be so miraculous there was a chance I would be done in as few as 3, or even that I would in any way be “done” after that was complete).

On the list: a plant-forward, no sugar/dairy/caffeine/alcohol/refined carbs/red meat diet; daily green smoothies with the recommended supplements; acupuncture and Chinese herbs (just the day prior I had met with Dr Guo, who prescribed both); visualization; healthy but high calorie foods to keep my weight up; and the resilience that has powered me from AP classes in high school through to the high-stress demands of a career in advertising.

Looking back at my plan now, I can officially say:

Hahahahahaha!

“Only suffering is enough to beat the ego,” wrote Richard Rohr; and I found this to be exactly true: cancer quickly made clear how irrelevant my achiever past would be in making it through my journey—and over time, how little control I actually had over what I was going through.

Today’s perspective—what we got right:

The ask for our friends and family to visualize stars was almost an afterthought. It was inspired by a story my mother told me about another patient, and the chapter I read in Radical Remission about social support. But it opened up a safe “language” for my network to support me, regardless of how well they knew me—or whether they knew what to say. The stars have endured for more than four years at this point; we’ve started to use them ourselves, when other people need support, and we’ve seen them being used by others in the same way.

Even at the very lowest points in my journey, it was still incredibly hard to ask for help—even prayers or good vibes were an uncomfortable request—but it was always easy to ask for stars. It’s hard to know whether the emotionally positive flood that inevitably followed my stars request was a function of the stars themselves or me getting fully vulnerable enough to ask and receive—but I assume it was probably some combination of both.

And Per’s closing words ring truer today than they did even then:

I love you like crazy.

Let’s win.

I’m not sure that I even knew what I meant when I declared my intent to “love my way through cancer” to my mother; but the depth of love I feel for Per and the kids today is absolutely a function of how our relationships deepened as we were forced to get more vulnerable, more angry, and more honest; as each of us grappled in our own way about all the ways life would be different if mine ended early.

When I tell people I think that cancer might be the best thing that ever happened to me, this is what I mean.

This morning, Delaney asked if we could go to coffee; so, we walked to Reprise Roasters for a pumpkin spice latte (me) and a maple cinnamon latte (her, although she preferred mine). Over our drinks, Delaney shared her perspective on what it was like to have a mother with cancer, comparing it to fear of a tarantula—always scary, but a lot more terrifying if you happen to live in an area where they do. 

“That makes sense,” I told her—and inwardly, I knew that if the cancer-tarantula hadn’t lived as close as it did, chances are good I would have said no to coffee this morning, or at least put it off until “later”: there were tomatoes yet to process, laundry to do, emails to send, and posts to write.

Instead, I said “Yes” to now. And every time I do, it feels like I win—because today I realize more than ever that I truly love them like crazy.

Coming later this week: My first chemo—and a fourth opinion