CANCER, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME

Cheri Laser

Pathology reports explained that the lump in my right breast was one of those benign things that
first scares the hell out of us and then leaves us weak with relief. That was the good news.
Unfortunately, more news was forthcoming about the enlarged lymph node under my right arm,
which I found while poking around after coming across the breast nodule.
“… small, cleaved-cell, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” I remember the surgeon saying in
May 1987, before he paused and looked at me as if he expected an informed response. I also
remember that I was meeting with my surgeon rather than my 40-something gynecologist
because the latter had fallen dead ten days earlier from a heart attack during his morning jog.
Nothing about this scenario appeared promising.
“English would be helpful here,” I quipped, attempting to provoke his normally animated
sense of humor in response to his medical-ese.
“You’ve probably saved your own life,” he said distinctly, with far too much gravity in
his voice. My brain was attempting to process his declaration when he continued. “No breast
cancer—but, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma … cancer of the lymphatic system … no cure …
discovered very early … hopeful …”
I’m sure he said more, but I can only recall my body shifting into a strange, mechanical
series of movements as I left his office with the address and phone number of an oncologist who
would supposedly be contacting me later that day. I do remember seeing my reflection in the
window as I walked through the lobby, and I looked the same as usual to myself. So did my car;
so did the route home; so did my driveway and my house. But the truth was that everything
connected to my life had already changed, and nothing would ever be the same again. I simply
didn’t understand any of that yet.
The saga began in Atlanta when I was forty years old. As an aside, I was also the mother
of a teenage daughter, a career woman, a wife, and a person way too busy for an inconvenience
like cancer. Once alone in my kitchen that afternoon, however, my lengthy to-do lists were
nullified by the booming echo of that word—cancer—in my head. My husband was out of town,
and my daughter was still at school. My parents, brother, and best girlfriend all lived in distant
states. Lonely doesn’t come close to describing how I felt as I paced in circles, between the stove
and refrigerator, while panic and terror wove themselves into the emotional equation. I did
telephone an associate at work so I could talk with someone, but my surprise revelation rendered
her mute. Hanging up, I poured myself a glass of wine, and then I cried for a very long time.
The next morning the lessons began. I went to the library to start researching non-
Hodgkin’s lymphoma (that was way before the Internet, Google, etc.), initially because I wanted
to explain the situation to my family. What I came to realize, however, is that the old knowledge-
is-power concept would become a mandatory element of my conversations with the approaching
assembly of physicians who expected to study me. While I bear the greatest of respect for
medicine’s marvels, the truth is that doctors don’t always know everything. But when you’ve just
been told you have cancer, you can’t imagine that the person with M.D. on his or her nametag
might be inadequately equipped to handle you. Nonetheless, this is your cancer, not the
doctor’s—so a pool of self-knowledge on the subject becomes your first layer of protection.
My library visits led me to some key facts. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is (or was then in
1987) relatively rare; and when the disease did occur, the patient was statistically a male over the
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age of 50, presenting in stage 3 or 4 (advanced). Since I was a 40-year-old female presenting in
stage 1 (barely), the average oncologist might see one diagnosis like mine before retirement.
My immediate move should have been to find a specialist dealing exclusively with
lymphoma. However, control was still in the hands of the general oncologist referred by my
surgeon—and after a series of CT scans, a bone marrow biopsy, and a variety of blood yada-
yada’s, he declared this to be a localized incident and put me into a month-long program of daily
radiation treatments. What he did not do was counsel me (or my family) on lymphoma realities,
including the no-cure brutality, the probability of numerous recurrences, or a hint that having
cancer might radically affect my view of the world. Therefore, once the radiation was complete,
my family and I assumed the ordeal was over.
Instead, clues that I was on uncharted ground soon began to surface. First, my abiding
passion for my job had dissipated, and I found myself creating opportunities to nest at home, to
spend time with my daughter, or with my parents and brother up and down the East Coast. After
years of claiming no desire to quit smoking, I stopped cold turkey and began teaching smoking
cessation classes for the American Cancer Society a year later. I also launched into a program of
regular exercise, formerly (and totally) out of character. Further, my suppressed desire to pursue
writing as a vocation appeared at the top of my new priority list. Our dining room table became
my seat of creativity where I outlined my first novel and the characters therein, and where I met
with a sense of peace and safety.
In the fall of 1988, my company announced plans to downsize and presented employees
with an “early-out” financial option. Without a reservation or second thought, I sold my husband
on the idea and left my 15-year business career behind me on an October Friday. The following
Monday I attended my first writer’s conference, and suddenly the “reinvention of me” was
underway. Cancer? What cancer?
Then, exactly three years after the first lymphoma event, more irregularities were spotted
in a routine CT scan. I remember my family and friends responding with complete astonishment
that this could happen again. Since no one had been talking about the illness—particularly me—
we had all assumed that the bad boy was gone. After all, even my doctor had been mute. But
when he suddenly began recommending aggressive treatment, including almost a year of
chemotherapy and radiation for what was diagnosed as another localized occurrence, the fog of
denial finally lifted. In that instant, I knew I needed to take control.
“I don’t mean to offend you,” I told him, “and you’re the doctor, of course. But your plan
for treatment seems a bit extreme and doesn’t feel right to me. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to
get another opinion or two.” In fact, my reaction wasn’t okay with him, and he was definitely
offended. Realizing that I didn’t care was an epiphany.
Although I had spent the three previous years mouthing words about strength and
survival, I had never fully faced my disease head-on until my June 1990 visit to Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. There I met with the head of a
nationally recognized department dealing exclusively with the research, study, and treatment of
my illness. While the ultimate recommendation was for a conservative approach to this particular
recurrence, there was also candid dialogue about the likelihood of this disease stalking my life
and, perhaps, causing me to check out of my stay on earth much earlier than I had anticipated.
The lymphoma would dictate some of this direction, but I would come to appreciate that an equal
or greater amount of power rested in my own hands.
The ensuing twelve years proved to be a roundabout journey. For the first ten, I was
followed at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta as I co-managed my illness and treatment
through sick months and those that weren’t so bad. In 1992, my marriage ended, largely because

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we wanted each other to be people we could no longer be—not an infrequent bi-product of

cancer, by the way. Then my illness started raging through my body, co-mingling with the
relentless stress from the mess I had subsequently made of my personal life, until my immune
system was nearly shot. Yet I still had no idea how sick I was.
In November of 1997, the FDA’s approval of Rituxan—a miraculous infusion drug for
my type of lymphoma—went a long way toward restoring my physical well-being. But I’d
become an emotional waste basket. Eventually, my position became clear: I was either going to
stay in bed and die, or I was going to get up and make some hard decisions and changes. That
was also the period when I found my way back to the spiritual path I had abandoned since early
adulthood. Cancer forces a face-to-face confrontation with mortality, and without the rediscovery
of a Higher Power, I would surely have chosen one of many alternate roads, all of which I’m
convinced would have been fatal.
Now in the year 2010—twenty-three years after I was diagnosed with lymphoma—I am
still here. The distance traveled over those years has certainly not been as the crow flies. Much
has been learned, and I believe that the most valuable lessons are those we share with others who
might benefit. Therefore, in my opinion, and ranking just below unshakeable faith, the most
critical cancer tool is self-management.
Learn everything there is to know about your disease. Every cancer is different, even
cancers within cancers. There are twelve kinds of lymphoma, for example, many variations of
breast cancer, and so on. Read, and scour the Internet. Learn how to understand your pathology
reports. Seek out teaching and research facilities. Use your new knowledge to ask questions of
your doctor(s)—ask lots of questions. Add supplemental approaches to your treatment program
that feel good to you, things like yoga, hydro-therapy, visualization.
Then gather the gumption to purge your life of all toxic relationships. Anyone who
makes you feel less than great about yourself needs to go! Your personal support network should
be filled with people who love you unconditionally, whether you have hair or not, whether you
swell up from chemo treatments or not, whether you’re depressed, angry, ready for work again,
or not. Your network should also include individuals who’ve been where you are and have
survived. They will serve as inspiration for you—and one day you will uplift someone else in
return.
Finally, take comfort in knowing that once you’ve been diagnosed, other problems in
your body will rarely go undetected. You’ll be followed so closely that you’ll be in much better
shape than friends of yours who procrastinate about their annual physicals. Just get through your
treatments, and you’ll see what I mean.
In the end, we all come to an end. Until then, the mission is to stay in command of
everything affecting us. Even a life-threatening illness, which amasses power from being so
scary, will buckle when confronted with an attitude that says, “Excuse me? I don’t think so!”
Topping the list of characteristics found in long-term cancer survivors, just above
“optimistic outlook,” is “royal pain in the ass.” Be one. Be proud. Be the boss. Be here!
Amen.