- Published on
(body art by Jemma Fassett)
Today is my 5th cancerversary.
Five years ago I went to the E.R. with what I thought was the flu, and infected bug bites, one on each leg. My blood work quickly showed that my white cell counts were astronomically high. The doctor told me I would start to hear the word “cancer.” I told him he had the wrong patient. I was an organic eating vegetarian who exercised regularly, never smoked, rarely drank, and meditated. I didn’t have cancer.
I had cancer. Acute myeloid leukemia, a rare blood cancer that more is more likely to affect men in their sixties and has a survival rate beyond 5 years of around 25-30%. I was told that if I didn’t undergo immediate treatment, I’d be dead in a month.
We still don’t know what causes acute myeloid leukemia. Risk factors include: high doses of radiation or benzene. Nope. Smoking. Nope. Previous radiation or chemotherapy. Nope. (Well, now, yup. See below for Fear of Relapse). Family history. Nope.
Over a dozen bone marrow biopsies (how did I manage to forget the actual number?!), 11 doses of full body radiation, 3 rounds of chemo, and 1 stem cell transplant with cells donated by my sister, Anita, later, I was declared in remission.
The recovery was hell. I had nausea. Fatigue. Depression. Anxiety. Mood swings. Weight swings. Chemo brain. My fingernails fell off one by one. I went into early onset menopause. My thyroid stopped working. I had osteopenia. I was immune suppressed and not allowed to eat takeout, ride the subway, or go to the theatre. I lost all my hair, including my eyelashes. Actually, I loved being bald. Cancer perk: I discovered I rock a shaved head.
I got to attend my own funeral. I got to feel the outpouring of love and support when we told everyone I was sick.
I was told it would take 3-5 years to recover. They were not wrong. It was tough and felt like it would last forever. With the support of my amazing husband, Aaron, and our tribe of generous wonderful folk, we got through it. Pro-tip, if you have to go through a terrifying health crisis shortly after getting married, make sure you have married a Zen Boy Scout.
Five years later, I’m healthy and strong. I run marathons dammit!
The mental game is the hardest. I’m terrified of relapse. Every headache, every time I’m over-tired, every bruise, every cut that takes a little longer to heal must be Cancer. Every medical appointment is stressful and anxiety-inducing. Most medical professionals I’ve encountered outside of Memorial Sloan Kettering don’t understand how to treat a Young Adult Survivor of Leukemia. They don’t understand that a 30-something woman can be in menopause. I’m impatient. I want everything done/learnt/achieved yesterday.
I’m rushing to catch up on lost time. To make the most of time in case it’s limited. I’ve seen 141 shows since I was allowed back into a theatre. I’ve run three marathons and three half-marathons. I’ve written and performed a one-woman show about my experience, The Big C Cabaret.
The chances of relapse decrease significantly after 5 years. Have I really reached that magic number? After losing the genetic lottery that gave me blood cancer in the first place, have I won the Cancer Survival lottery? Knock on wood. Turn around three times. Throw salt in the air.
The places on my legs where the infected bug bites were have turned into beautiful mandala shaped scars. When I’m wearing shorts, people see them and ask, “what are those marks on your legs?” They are my story.
In September my legs and I are going to run our 4th marathon.
In November, on the 5th anniversary of my stem cell transplant, I’ll run my 5th marathon. I’m running with Fred’s Team and raising vital funds for leukemia research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It’s my way of saying thank you to the amazing doctors and researchers that saved my life.
Five years ago, I was dying.
Today, I am here. I am here. I am here!
Five years ago I went to the E.R. with what I thought was the flu, and infected bug bites, one on each leg. My blood work quickly showed that my white cell counts were astronomically high. The doctor told me I would start to hear the word “cancer.” I told him he had the wrong patient. I was an organic eating vegetarian who exercised regularly, never smoked, rarely drank, and meditated. I didn’t have cancer.
I had cancer. Acute myeloid leukemia, a rare blood cancer that more is more likely to affect men in their sixties and has a survival rate beyond 5 years of around 25-30%. I was told that if I didn’t undergo immediate treatment, I’d be dead in a month.
We still don’t know what causes acute myeloid leukemia. Risk factors include: high doses of radiation or benzene. Nope. Smoking. Nope. Previous radiation or chemotherapy. Nope. (Well, now, yup. See below for Fear of Relapse). Family history. Nope.
Over a dozen bone marrow biopsies (how did I manage to forget the actual number?!), 11 doses of full body radiation, 3 rounds of chemo, and 1 stem cell transplant with cells donated by my sister, Anita, later, I was declared in remission.
The recovery was hell. I had nausea. Fatigue. Depression. Anxiety. Mood swings. Weight swings. Chemo brain. My fingernails fell off one by one. I went into early onset menopause. My thyroid stopped working. I had osteopenia. I was immune suppressed and not allowed to eat takeout, ride the subway, or go to the theatre. I lost all my hair, including my eyelashes. Actually, I loved being bald. Cancer perk: I discovered I rock a shaved head.
I got to attend my own funeral. I got to feel the outpouring of love and support when we told everyone I was sick.
I was told it would take 3-5 years to recover. They were not wrong. It was tough and felt like it would last forever. With the support of my amazing husband, Aaron, and our tribe of generous wonderful folk, we got through it. Pro-tip, if you have to go through a terrifying health crisis shortly after getting married, make sure you have married a Zen Boy Scout.
Five years later, I’m healthy and strong. I run marathons dammit!
The mental game is the hardest. I’m terrified of relapse. Every headache, every time I’m over-tired, every bruise, every cut that takes a little longer to heal must be Cancer. Every medical appointment is stressful and anxiety-inducing. Most medical professionals I’ve encountered outside of Memorial Sloan Kettering don’t understand how to treat a Young Adult Survivor of Leukemia. They don’t understand that a 30-something woman can be in menopause. I’m impatient. I want everything done/learnt/achieved yesterday.
I’m rushing to catch up on lost time. To make the most of time in case it’s limited. I’ve seen 141 shows since I was allowed back into a theatre. I’ve run three marathons and three half-marathons. I’ve written and performed a one-woman show about my experience, The Big C Cabaret.
The chances of relapse decrease significantly after 5 years. Have I really reached that magic number? After losing the genetic lottery that gave me blood cancer in the first place, have I won the Cancer Survival lottery? Knock on wood. Turn around three times. Throw salt in the air.
The places on my legs where the infected bug bites were have turned into beautiful mandala shaped scars. When I’m wearing shorts, people see them and ask, “what are those marks on your legs?” They are my story.
In September my legs and I are going to run our 4th marathon.
In November, on the 5th anniversary of my stem cell transplant, I’ll run my 5th marathon. I’m running with Fred’s Team and raising vital funds for leukemia research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It’s my way of saying thank you to the amazing doctors and researchers that saved my life.
Five years ago, I was dying.
Today, I am here. I am here. I am here!
Please feel free to share!
- Published on
“...every once in while, pure chance intercedes to remind us that whatever structures of control we may put into place, however much we may mistake the illusion of choice for the fact of choice, randomness is the reigning monarch of the universe.”
Maria Popova, Figuring
There are trillions upon trillions of
Stars in our universe,
Give or take, and
Millions upon millions of
Published books.
I used to wonder
How has the world has not fallen off its axis
With the weight of all the books
We have written?
How do we choose
Between the great volumes
Of words and pages and titles and texts
Which ones to read?
Choice, luck, happenstance?
One day at
Thirteen
My voracious bookworm self
Desired to read a good chunky book
I browsed the shelves
Of my school library
And came across
Sophie’s World
By Jostein Gaarder
A crash course in the history of
Western Philosophy
I remember walking the perimeter of the playground
Where we went camping
While reading it
It led to The Solitaire Mystery and Maya
A new way of seeing the world
Is it a coincidence that I would one day
Marry a philosopher?
One day when
I was seventeen or eighteen
Thumbing through the Sydney Morning Herald
A section called
“Can You Judge A Book (By Its First Page)”
(Or something of the like)
The first page of a book
Followed by a review
“Wooooooo-
hoooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end.”
Ali Smith’s Hotel World
I would sporadically check the shelves in Dymocks
Fiction: Smi-
To see what else she had written
It made me want to write
My first published story was an imitation of its style
It led me to The Accidental and Like, and
Seventeen years later
Ali Smith is still writing and publishing and
I’m still reading every word
I don’t recall when I first came across Brain Pickings
Written/curated/nurtured
By the extraordinary Maria Popova
I think I was still in Sydney?
Or perhaps it was London?
The perils of the internet
Memory is different now
But at thirty-four
I read an excerpt of Popova’s Figuring
And knew it was another sparkling luminescence
I borrowed it from the library
And quickly realized I needed my own copy
It’s a brick of a book
I’ve lugged it around Manhattan and Brooklyn and Jersey
And even took it into the woods
The inter-weaving of science and art and literature and poetry
The stories of extraordinary women
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Margaret Fuller, Maria Mitchell, George Sand, Rachel Carson
The role of the artist/scientist/author
To connect the dots
To illuminate
To shine
To help us figure out who we are.
Stars in our universe,
Give or take, and
Millions upon millions of
Published books.
I used to wonder
How has the world has not fallen off its axis
With the weight of all the books
We have written?
How do we choose
Between the great volumes
Of words and pages and titles and texts
Which ones to read?
Choice, luck, happenstance?
One day at
Thirteen
My voracious bookworm self
Desired to read a good chunky book
I browsed the shelves
Of my school library
And came across
Sophie’s World
By Jostein Gaarder
A crash course in the history of
Western Philosophy
I remember walking the perimeter of the playground
Where we went camping
While reading it
It led to The Solitaire Mystery and Maya
A new way of seeing the world
Is it a coincidence that I would one day
Marry a philosopher?
One day when
I was seventeen or eighteen
Thumbing through the Sydney Morning Herald
A section called
“Can You Judge A Book (By Its First Page)”
(Or something of the like)
The first page of a book
Followed by a review
“Wooooooo-
hoooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end.”
Ali Smith’s Hotel World
I would sporadically check the shelves in Dymocks
Fiction: Smi-
To see what else she had written
It made me want to write
My first published story was an imitation of its style
It led me to The Accidental and Like, and
Seventeen years later
Ali Smith is still writing and publishing and
I’m still reading every word
I don’t recall when I first came across Brain Pickings
Written/curated/nurtured
By the extraordinary Maria Popova
I think I was still in Sydney?
Or perhaps it was London?
The perils of the internet
Memory is different now
But at thirty-four
I read an excerpt of Popova’s Figuring
And knew it was another sparkling luminescence
I borrowed it from the library
And quickly realized I needed my own copy
It’s a brick of a book
I’ve lugged it around Manhattan and Brooklyn and Jersey
And even took it into the woods
The inter-weaving of science and art and literature and poetry
The stories of extraordinary women
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Margaret Fuller, Maria Mitchell, George Sand, Rachel Carson
The role of the artist/scientist/author
To connect the dots
To illuminate
To shine
To help us figure out who we are.
- Published on
In Middlesex County, New Jersey
About thirty minutes from Elizabeth and
An hour from Manhattan
There is a park
Cheesequake
A strange word in English
Derived (stolen) from the Lenape words
Cheseh-oh-ke or Chichequaas or Chiskhakink
“Upland” or “land that has been cleared”
The land is now bordered
By freeways
And sliced through the middle
By the Garden State Parkway
Typical New Jersey
The intertwining of
Nature and industry
The park itself is beautiful
A “transitional zone of ecosystems”
Field and forest
Swamp and marsh
Pine barrens and lake
We hiked the trails
Blue and white
Breathing in the cool of the trees
The woodlands degrees cooler with
Thick rich green velvet mosses
Carpeting the bases of tree trunks
And covering the rocks
Fungis of different sizes and shapes
Lettuce-like hen of the woods, chip-like artist's conks
Parasitic ghost plants and tiny tawny grisettes
We tried to find the butterfly garden
But the weeds have obscured the path
The mountain bikers have overtaken that particular trail and
The garden is in disrepair
We came across a fallen tree, a giant now resting on its side
Its roots so thick it bought up the earth
We later learned it was a victim of Hurricane Sandy
Grasses are now growing on the wall of roots and earth
The resilience of nature
We sat by Perrine Pond
And watched an egret
Stalk her lunch in the water
We had our own lunch by the lake
And swam with tiny fishies
The water filled with pockets of warm and cold
Aaron cooked pork chops on the cast iron skillet above the coals
I added corn on the cob slathered in butter, sprinkled with salt
Is there anything more “American summer” than corn and an open fire?
The sun slipped away through the trees
The magical golden light of
Sunset in the woods
The extraordinary fireflies
Flitting and flirting
Bioluminescent bums in the darkening
Is it any wonder our ancestors believed in fairies?
In the night I had anxiety
It’s only a thin mesh tent between me and the
Bears or Human Predators Out There
Every crackle in the undergrowth
Surely a step closer to my demise
The bears did not eat me
But the mosquitos and gnats feasted
The proximity of the freeway meant we heard cars all through the night
I love waking up in the forest
The smell of earth
The remnants of last night’s fire
The coolness of the trees
I sat on a fallen trunk
And meditated on the moss
When we got home
The refrigerator, stove, and AC
Seemed like a miracle
I sometimes feel like I have a split personality
There’s Show Girl Me
She wants to see all the shows
Be in all the shows and
Live on Broadway forever and ever amen
And then there’s Forest Faery Me
Who wants to abandon society
And live off-grid
And commune with the trees
And the soil and
Know all the plants and flowers and creatures by name
I miss the woods
I miss the trees.
About thirty minutes from Elizabeth and
An hour from Manhattan
There is a park
Cheesequake
A strange word in English
Derived (stolen) from the Lenape words
Cheseh-oh-ke or Chichequaas or Chiskhakink
“Upland” or “land that has been cleared”
The land is now bordered
By freeways
And sliced through the middle
By the Garden State Parkway
Typical New Jersey
The intertwining of
Nature and industry
The park itself is beautiful
A “transitional zone of ecosystems”
Field and forest
Swamp and marsh
Pine barrens and lake
We hiked the trails
Blue and white
Breathing in the cool of the trees
The woodlands degrees cooler with
Thick rich green velvet mosses
Carpeting the bases of tree trunks
And covering the rocks
Fungis of different sizes and shapes
Lettuce-like hen of the woods, chip-like artist's conks
Parasitic ghost plants and tiny tawny grisettes
We tried to find the butterfly garden
But the weeds have obscured the path
The mountain bikers have overtaken that particular trail and
The garden is in disrepair
We came across a fallen tree, a giant now resting on its side
Its roots so thick it bought up the earth
We later learned it was a victim of Hurricane Sandy
Grasses are now growing on the wall of roots and earth
The resilience of nature
We sat by Perrine Pond
And watched an egret
Stalk her lunch in the water
We had our own lunch by the lake
And swam with tiny fishies
The water filled with pockets of warm and cold
Aaron cooked pork chops on the cast iron skillet above the coals
I added corn on the cob slathered in butter, sprinkled with salt
Is there anything more “American summer” than corn and an open fire?
The sun slipped away through the trees
The magical golden light of
Sunset in the woods
The extraordinary fireflies
Flitting and flirting
Bioluminescent bums in the darkening
Is it any wonder our ancestors believed in fairies?
In the night I had anxiety
It’s only a thin mesh tent between me and the
Bears or Human Predators Out There
Every crackle in the undergrowth
Surely a step closer to my demise
The bears did not eat me
But the mosquitos and gnats feasted
The proximity of the freeway meant we heard cars all through the night
I love waking up in the forest
The smell of earth
The remnants of last night’s fire
The coolness of the trees
I sat on a fallen trunk
And meditated on the moss
When we got home
The refrigerator, stove, and AC
Seemed like a miracle
I sometimes feel like I have a split personality
There’s Show Girl Me
She wants to see all the shows
Be in all the shows and
Live on Broadway forever and ever amen
And then there’s Forest Faery Me
Who wants to abandon society
And live off-grid
And commune with the trees
And the soil and
Know all the plants and flowers and creatures by name
I miss the woods
I miss the trees.