Cancer Survivorship

Surviving cancer is difficult. As soon as I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in March 2022, my oncologist told me to take the mental health aspect of cancer treatment as seriously as the physical treatment of cancer. I tried following his instructions to the letter, carefully attending as many cancer therapy sessions as possible. One thing I didn’t realize is that the mental health aspect of treatment requires focus well beyond the end of physical treatment.

Cancer is not just a physical discomfort or a lot of pain, it is also a personal trauma. Until my diagnosis I had never been faced with a higher probability of death. With my then four-year-old son I tried to hide the pain I experienced but it became impossible to hide as I lost a lot of my hair and all my eyebrows. For years, I avoided joining cancer support groups with other cancer patients because I didn’t want to face the prospect of knowing someone who died of a similar diagnosis.

Survivor’s Guilt is feeling sorry for living after cancer, especially to those who died of the same diagnosis. The way my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosis was explained to me, people with my diagnosis had a 90% chance of survival but the people who die of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma usually exhibit other health conditions preventing their bodies from taking treatment well. I maintained a healthy lifestyle before cancer so it wasn’t likely that I would be in the 10% who didn’t survive Stage II Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

I was fortunate I caught my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma earlier and it had not developed enough to be a real threat to my life. My oncologist told me he had seen many patients with higher chances of death at diagnosis than me. All cancer is bad, and I don’t want to say I am one of the “lucky” ones, but I had treatable cancer.

I make no apologies for living and I didn’t feel too much survivor’s guilt once I realized after my first chemotherapy that my body took treatment well. From the moment of my diagnosis, I felt my job was to survive and I didn’t want to think of anything else. I never prepared any will or made any end-of-life preparations after my diagnosis because I had very strong confidence that I would survive. Afterall, I was only 38 years old and that is much too young for life to end.

In my family, my Mom has a cousin, Bernard Wolfson, who lost both his wife, Leslie, and his sister, Jessica, to cancers. Jessica died of acute lymphoblastic leukemia and Leslie died of metastatic breast cancer. Bernard is a special relative. He never remarried and I visited him at his apartment in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe when he was living as a single Dad with two teenage kids in 2012. Even though he was living in one of the most beautiful and romantic cities in the world at the time, I could sense the deep loss of his wife was very hard on him.

As a journalist, Bernard was the lead reporter at the Orange County Register on a series of articles on rating the quality of hospital care in Orange County that received a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. He is now still writing for the Kaiser Health Foundation news. My visit with his family in 2012 helped me realize that when someone dies from cancer, the loss for family members is long term. It doesn’t stop at death.

When I had the opportunity to fly out to Orange County recently to do an Elephants and Tea reading of an article I wrote, Bernard came to my reading. It was such a deep honor for me to have him at my reading. After surviving cancer myself, I felt greater empathy for him because I understand a little bit about the pain two women close to him must have felt before they died.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I thought of Bernard’s household I had visited ten years prior and how important it was for me to survive because I didn’t want to leave my wife and son behind. I feel no guilt for surviving cancer because my wife and son should be able to have me, at least until my son grows up and longer than that.

I have a Coney Island neighbor who died from non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Max Guadaloupe. Max was a passionate baseball fan and ran a local little league teaching kids baseball. I was telling my wife about his death in late February 2022 and how I had just seen him over the previous Christmas break at a holiday party. His death was a total shock.

My wife was telling me cancer could happen to anyone and pointed to the bump on my neck that had just started to get bigger. I originally thought the bump was from my son scratching my neck when I carried him on my shoulders. I went to get the bump checked out after thinking about Max’s death and because my wife told me to go get it checked out. If cancer killed a strong guy like Max it could certainly kill me if I didn’t take care of it right away.

Sure enough, after several tests and biopsies, I learned I had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. To make matters even more interesting, one of my nurses who administered my ABVD treatment was a nurse named Kenny who was from Coney Island and a family friend of Max. For men, when there is a problem with our bodies we are used to toughing pain and problems out. We don’t often seek help right away because we are conditioned to endure pain quietly. I will always remember Max for helping me realize I needed to get my neck checked when I did.