Our Story captures humanly experiences of living with cancer—the stories that make up our lives and shape who we want to be.
Well, Christmas time came and I was in the lobby and one of the nurses came out and she said somebody in the back wants to see you, well, I had no idea who it might be. But it was him, he had brought me a Christmas gift and I said why did you do that? And he said, because you’re the only person who‘s ever come in my room and talked to me and I’ve been coming here a long time.
A friend of mine said to me recently, 'Have you always been this positive?' Which I thought was a funny reaction to a conversation where I was being what I think of as my pretty cynical self. But I think what he was noting was my level of acceptance … and I just can't use all the emotional energy to be angry or frustrated.
And the importance of slowing down, and listening to your body, and remembering that you're human. And I think that's one of the things ... We're all so intent on being superhuman. And until nature comes and slaps us down, ‘no!'
I was someone where I put fear in the driver's seat most of my life. And one of the things I'm learning on this path, with stage four, is relegating fear to the backseat.
I did such drastic things, got divorced from my husband of 30 years, quit my job, sold my house and moved to the beach on chemo. They think I'm crazy, but I think they don't know what to do and they're stuck, or they have influencers saying, 'Don't do this. Do this. Don't do this.' A lot of it is just turning off the voices. You have to turn off the voices and go find your own voice.
Grief is much broader in terms of dealing with loss, including when there's an idea of loss. Maybe that loss is going to happen in 20 years or something like that. That can be a thing. That was really helpful just to think about … the better you deal with it, the better you're able to provide for other people.
I said, 'Really? You wouldn't be embarrassed?' She goes, 'Mom, you're not like Britney Spears who went crazy and shaved her head. You have cancer.' I said, 'Oh.' Eventually they were just like, 'Mom, who cares.' I was like, 'Oh, all right. I thought you guys would care. I was doing it for you.' For Samantha to say that to me it was like very heartwarming.
I started seeing other men that were going through that. That I think also was another added layer of, 'I'm not alone in this,' … That helped. I think that's what kind of helped me shift from that thinking of, 'Oh my god. How is this possible?' to, 'Okay. There's things that you can do to help this. Not only yourself, but to help others.
So life just continued. I guess that was the most surprising thing if anything, was that life continued as normal. At work I couldn’t do all the meetings so I had some colleagues help out. That part actually helped, we wanted some routine because you didn’t want to dwell. It was that sense of normalcy that got us through it.
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