On Yelping in the Woods, New Age Guilt and Valentine's Day for the UnLovelies....

Sometimes there are moments, days actually, that I feel like doing this. Walking out into some snow covered woods and letting out a "yelp" of thanks. Anyone that has walked through a disease that could kill you and walked out the other side might recognize such gratitude.

In my own retrospect, cancer not only teaches us how to live, but how to die. I may or may not make it to age 80 or so. In reality I could get hit by a bus, have a piano dropped on my head by the Laurel and Hardy Moving Company or I may not. Or cancer may come back.

But I will die. People like cancer survivors are more aware of their mortality I suppose. Their senses are tweaked a bit. You don't know how many times when the subject has come up with people that either had cancer or has had a friend or family member that went through cancer and treatment I have heard, "they just weren't the same afterwards."

My usual reply is, "it's damn hard to come back from cancer treatment." The treatment wants to trick cancer into believing your body is dying.  You literally, not metaphorically have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Learning to take care of yourself after cancer treatment isn't easy, in fact it is damn hard but it also can be rewarding.  The emotional roller coaster that you experience after chemotherapy has had volumes written on it.  There is also survivor's guilt. Why did people like David Bowie or Alan Rickman with all their wealth and access to medical care die and the average Joe like me survive?

Cancer doesn't play fair, it is blind to all this. It doesn't care how rich you are, how successful you are, your reputation, your social status or if you have a 1000 followers on Facebook. Cancer is insidious like that. So any guilt one might feel or is directed towards himself/herself is in reality groundless.

Cancer is simply no respecter of persons. Some people cannot comprehend this. It is alright, I always thought cancer was something that happened to someone else.

I also did not know but there is a term by Physicians that they have labeled "New Age Guilt". Below is a video where a Physician, who is also a cancer survivor, discussing this attitude where a brother blames his brother for not "thinking right" or "wrong thinking" (ie being negative) for his brother's cancer returning after being in remission.

I could tell you things that were and continue to be said to me since my return from cancer but it would be pointless. Much of it is simply ignorance. You simply cannot expect others really to understand and in most cases it is fruitless to even try. You move on. You also learn to avoid manipulative and controlling people. Your life just simply isn't the same.

I think you learn a deeper sense of "reverence." In that reverence you realize everyone has to figure or understand things on their own terms. Although we are all unique, sometimes what we go through is not. But those who have not gone through the grinder of cancer, it is really not their ordeal nor should you even try to convey it to them. All you can do is simply pray they don't experience it.

You learn to be a bit more selfish. In other ways you learn to become more compassionate.  You learn to love the unlovely. Those that have been neglected and left behind by family and friends usually because their disease became too much for them to deal with. I don't say this to shame them, I know all too well that we are hard to deal with and not everyone has the fortitude to be a caregiver. Part of this is simply the society we have become. But you, you who are left behind should feel no shame either. Your path have simply become different.  You simply hope for the day that somehow your path will cross with the path of the living again. Until then it may seem that you are lost in the woods. Enjoy the woods you are in..."Yelp".


A suggestion, become a bit more selfish and self caring. If you are going through treatment you will not feel like that. To those that have to deal with going through treatment alone...I know what that is all about. I am not talking about friends coming over and seeing how you are doing, I am talking being alone late at night wrapped in the embrace of chemicals flushing out of your body. I know how that is. It is the "Dark Night of the Soul."

So to all you unlovelies, since it is Valentine's Day...this is for you. It was done on a Moleskine notebook with a .005 Unipen.

Happy Valentine's Day...to me you are beautiful...