The Ass Cancer Chronicles

Yesterday, I did yardwork for hours. We had awesome help, the kids were sleeping, the sun was shining. I got after it just like I normally would… but much slower. It was lovely.

Why am I telling you about doing yardwork, you might be asking. Like, wtf cares, gold star!

Because this is an important example illustrating the differences in every cancer person’s journey- no two are the same, regardless of diagnosis, flavor, treatment plan. I’m also going to use this event to answer a few questions that have popped up recently because education is key, and knowledge is power, y’all.

Many of us have or have had cancer, or know of a loved one, friend, acquaintance with some type of cancer or who has passed on from it. Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. If you have not experienced cancer in your life in some way, shape, or form as of yet, that is truly a miracle.

This past July 2024, my stepdad (lovingly referred to as TomDad) passed from a rare form of cancer that was actually caused by treatment of a previous cancer that he had many years ago. He was one of the healthiest human beings that I knew – biking, hiking, volunteering, sailing, advocating, always out and about even in his retirement. It took over a year and a trip to the Mayo Clinic to diagnose him properly, and when it happened, the outlook wasn’t what we’d hoped for. After various treatments, and so so so many pills, he spent a lot of his time talking and FaceTiming with us on the phone; visits with his children and grandchildren; sleeping; not having much to eat. This is still hard to talk about, so I’ll leave it at that and tackle that fear of mine another time (yay for compartmentalization, human brain – love yooouu).

While TomDad was diagnosed the last week of December 2023, I received news of another diagnosis – my mother-in-law, Carla. Another fit, camping and traveling, biking beauty, was diagnosed with mesothelioma. Immunotherapy treatment is administered once every 21 days, and helps to keep the cancer at bay. She and her husband, Blake, actually just visited last week and were the hugest help while the kids were off of school. She gets tired, understandably, but still functions as an outwardly “non-cancer person”. If you didn’t know her well, you wouldn’t think twice that she was dealing with a terminal illness.

I think movies play a huge role in what we think of as cancer, and that the perception provided of it is that it’s always big & scary. That it’s always despair. It is slashing of abilities and happiness, and anger out of emotional hurt and sadness. Although those feelings are real for me, they are also (luckily) fleeting for me. Now, while that’s true for me, it’s not always true for the next “cancer person”, and I understand that even though we’re all lumped into the “cancer-person” category, that each journey is quite different, even with similar diagnoses.

BUTT, I have found it still to be big and scary for many to talk about with me. Assumptions are made because I’m doing yardwork – “hey, obviously it’s not THAT bad”, and for week 2, it wasn’t. Thank Christ. I got to have a fire with friends, go to the Candyland Ball event & fundraiser, hang at Little House (best wine shop & winebar in New Orleans, just sayin), walk & play with our kids, finally hang out & talk to Steve, go to art class with my wonderful mother, do yardwork, take very minimal drugs for nausea, hang with our rad in-laws, have Thanksgiving with my family… it doesn’t mean that next week won’t be tough as shit. It doesn’t mean that this week with full on radiation won’t require different decisions when it comes to food, rest, abstaining from alcohol, taking anti-nausea pills, and working really, really hard to stay positive in light of the second round of chemo next week.

I guess the whole point of this post is that you don’t know until you ass, er, ask. Your brain will give you the easiest answer – it’s trained to do that, afterall, and many times, the easiest answer comes by way of judgment, assumption, and other funny things. We love to label. We love to find the quickest rationalization. We looooooove to be right… and unfortunately, asking the questions to test our assumptions can be very uncomfy cozy for us (damn humans).

Luckily, I’m reminded that these reactions come from a place of love and sometimes even a place of fear. The fabulous Brené Brown talks a lot about these two in her various books and podcast, and I’m glad that I’ve been fortunate enough to explore them. Something that she said, and I was reminded of recently, is that we’re all doing our best. Now, someone may not be doing YOUR best or MY best, but that’s unrealistic to expect, right? They aren’t you. You aren’t them. Everyone is different and every journey is different. I think about the resources and examples that are provided as it pertains to cancer, and it’s really, really easy for me to see that everyone’s just doing their best… because, fuck, we just don’t know, y’all. There’s so much to learn about the various flavors, correlations, causations, etc. so so so much.

I invite you, regardless of how scary, obscene, or silly you think your question may be, to ask.

Fun fact: You can ask me! I’m happy to answer questions based on MY journey, regarding MY experience. Although mine may look nothing like someone else’s, remember – at some point, cancer will most likely become a part of your life in some way. If this scares you, I invite you to squash even a portion of that fear, and reach out and ask the questions. You know I won’t hold back in giving you alllllllll of the tea, especially as it pertains to this beautiful ass of mine.

Go forth and ass’me a question, I’ll be right here, love bug.

Until next time,

Kirsten.