This week is my cancerversary.
It's the two-year anniversary of the time that I was diagnosed with melanoma and went through the operation that removed a fun-sized leg chunk. It’s a wound that I’m still recovering from; a condition that leaves me naked in the seat of my dermatologist’s office, watching Bay News 9 while a team of doctors prods at my skin once every three months.
I borrowed the team “cancerversary” from Tim Kreider, who refers to the anniversary of the date that he was stabbed in the throat as his stabbiversary.
His stabbiversary, he writes, serves as an annual reminder that the life he’s living is a “round on the house”:
“The horrible thing that I’d always dreaded was going to happen to me had finally happened. I figured I was off the hook for a while. … As far as I was concerned everything in this life was what Raymond Carver, in writing of his own second chance, called ‘gravy.’”
-Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
I read that passage several months before my cancer diagnosis. I thought, “Wow, how cool. Gravy!” Then I got cancer and was subsequently cured, and now Kreider’s point is even more illuminating. Having assumed the worst about my chances, everything that came after the oncologist’s all clear signal has felt like a round on the house.
I’ll be the first to admit that a bout of skin cancer is nowhere near as harrowing as being stabbed in the throat. My dermatologist and oncologist seem to think otherwise. Their litany of literature reminds me that melanoma has the highest fatality among skin cancer, and that it can turn deadly within six weeks, and that it most often afflicts those aged 80 and above.
How lucky for me to have gotten it at 23!
Being the youngest patient at the cancer center is a drag. My fellow patients mistake me for a hospital employee. Oncologists assume I’m an elderly patient’s grandchild. The assistants seem embarrassed to ask me the old people questions:
Do you have a pacemaker?
What pills are you on?
Have you experienced any unexpected falls?
I want to respond: “Does falling out the front door of The Emerald on First Friday count?” but I don’t. The assistants are often my age, and I fear that if I reveal to them my go-to bars then they might recognize me at one and identify me as their patient.
“Hey, I know this guy!” they’d yell. “He’s my patient!”
“Yes, thanks for measuring my height (6’1) and weight (redacted) before your boss saved my life. What do you want me to do, buy you a drink?”
As you can tell, I’m a bit cynical. But visiting hospitals and clinics and specialists for such regular check ups would make the saintliest among us crack cancer jokes from time to time. For God’s sake, my dermatologist proudly displays a scoreboard of cancer diagnoses on a chalkboard.
I’m sure it’s designed as a marketing ploy — look how many cancers we found! — but it makes me feel like just another number on the abacus of death. One day I want to ask her, “Hey, want me to stand in the sun some more? I see your squamous cell carcinoma numbers could use some juicing.”
I only realized how cynical I am during my last cancerversary, when my therapist asked me how I felt about the 4% chance that my melanoma returns some day.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how optimistic would you say you are?” he asked. “10 meaning your melanoma never returns.”
“Probably a 6, maybe 7.”
I grinned at him, brimming with confidence.
He stared back at me. “That’s not great.”
“Oh.”
So, yes, perhaps I am a closet cynic. But I really am grateful! If you hear me cracking sardonic jokes, just know that that’s my way of looking at things. Cancer humor was the only thing that got me through my diagnosis and surgery and the four months of limp-legged recovery.
(That, and off-brand Vicodin.)
One of the big things I’ve been working on is framing, a technique utilized by both therapists and sketch comedy writers to readjust perceptions.
When faced with a tough situation, a therapist might ask, “How can we frame this into a positive?”
When faced with the same situation, a writer asks, “How can we frame this into a joke?”
I think the techniques are the same, so excuse me if I make a joke about my cancer leg. That’s just me framing my way through life. The jokes work a little too well, I fear. They almost make me happy that the whole thing happened.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy that I had cancer.
But, at the same time… I kind of am?
(I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that.)
I’m just grateful to be in that bonus life, as Kreider refers to it. It really, truly feels like gravy. I already know what that awful, dreadful, no-good, life-ender that everybody looks forward to feels like. It makes the great, wonderful, all-good life thing feel a bit… I don’t know…
Gravy-er?
The phone call from my dermatologist confirming my worst fears, that I had cancer, devastated me. The oncologist’s recommendation that he operate on my leg had me shaking in my Vans.
Going through subsequent treatments, the wound debridement, and four months of unofficial PT to wind up cracking jokes on the otherside is Dufresne-esque.
Meaning, surviving my treatment and painful recovery process felt like crawling through a river of shit to get to freedom, as Andy Dufresne does in Shawshank Redemption. The phone call from my surgeon telling me I was cancer-free was a rush greater than any off-brand Vicodin could provide.
The phrase “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is a cliche. But, as a writer, let me clue you into a little secret about cliches that Big Literature doesn’t want you to know:
Cliches are cliches because they’re true.
I didn’t consider how great it was to wake up with all my limbs before I almost lost one. There’s nothing better than feeling your heart beating after learning that a fast-growing disease could’ve stopped it. Nowadays I go for runs and relish the throbbing in my scar, which is still healing after two years, because I know what it feels like to be couch-ridden for four months straight.
Melanoma lost. I won.
The sun can kiss my ass.
(OK, maybe not. That would probably cause more cancer.)
What else is new?
I’m starting to freelance write some more. If you or someone you know needs professional (or unprofessional) copy written, hit me up.
“But Mike,” you ask, “what is freelance writing?”
Great question, voice in my head that sounds like Dr. J.
Freelance writing means independent, contract writing. Basically, it means paying me to be your typewriter monkey for an hourly fee.
I can do blog posts, articles, social media, newsletters, marketing materials, white pages, stories, a re-writing of King Lear written from the perspective of an alien named Montgomery whose saucer crash lands in Stratford-upon-Avon, etc.
But, seriously. I’m cheap and efficient. The sign on my desk reads: Will write for beer.
Shouts out to…
Moffitt Cancer Center and all the angelic specialists who I disparaged in this newsletter.
Salem’s Fresh Eats, for the 1 a.m. gyro last Friday.