Diagnosis Day

As the parent of teenagers, I'm accustomed to having my kids think that the majority of what I do is weird. Most of the time, I figure this is just biology doing its job, but sometimes I have to admit that they might have a point.

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with my son, and I started talking about an idea I had to mark this year's Diagnosis Day, my annual commemoration of the day cancer became a part of my life. "Mom," he said, "no offense, but Diagnosis Day seems kind of weird. I mean, I could see if you were going to celebrate, like, when it was over or something. But diagnosis seems like a bad thing. Why would you want to celebrate that?"

I think this is actually an understandable question. So, instead of the day I got cancer, why not celebrate the day I beat cancer?

One reason is that there really is no such day. In my own case, I was officially "cancer-free" as soon as my surgery was completed, but I had in front of me another 18 months of multiple types of chemotherapy, radiation, and several years of drug therapy that is still actually ongoing. There was no time in that round of bruising, scarring, body- and soul-battering struggle for survival that seemed the appropriate moment for celebration.

Not only that, but I believe in every case, not just mine, even once treatment is over, even once someone has uttered the magical words like "remission" or "cancer-free", only if you have not had cancer can you believe that there is ever, ever a moment when it is completely and conclusively behind you. Just last week, I had a volunteer in my office at work, telling me about his relief that his oncology appointment that morning had gone well. He said, "I mean, I already know I'm in remission and everything, so I know it was fine, but...you know." I said, "It's always there." We nodded, knowing.

Newly diagnosed, I had a veteran say to me once, "It just walks right in and pulls up a seat, doesn't it?" And that is still the best description I have ever heard. Cancer pulls up a seat at the table of your life, sits down like a family member, makes itself at home. It moves in and out of your spaces, occupies your thoughts, becomes your closest companion, at least for a while. Although the chair may sometimes be empty, it remains, always a reminder of its absent occupant. Diagnosis is the beginning of a lifetime relationship, in a way you can't realize until it has begun. It reminds me of the way some friends of mine, years ago before any of us were parents, after winning a long battle with infertility, around the beginning of the second trimester of their much-longed-for pregnancy, asked their OB, "So, when can we stop worrying?" (Parents of adult children, I can hear you laughing.) Once you've become a part of each other, there will never again be a time when the thought, the worry, the awareness, will be absent in your thoughts, even when you are no longer united in body.

But there is a reason for marking Diagnosis Day that is about more than just having no clear end-point to commemorate. While my son is right that a cancer diagnosis seems like a bad thing--and I won't argue that it is a positive experience that everyone should have--those of us who have sat in its company know that it brings along with it other, more welcome guests. The lessons, people, and events that accompany it will change your life in ways that are painful, beautiful, and unexpected. You will grow in ways you didn't know you needed to grow. You will learn something important about the people and relationships in your life, even if those lessons are difficult. Things will be revealed, refined, clarified. Whatever else happens, you will never be the same again.

When I had just received my diagnosis, on the long, exhausting day I met my whole medical team for the first time, I stopped on the way home for Chinese food and caffeine. Too tired and overwhelmed to be hungry, I picked at my food; finally, before leaving, I opened the fortune cookie to the tiny slip of paper that read, "You will have much to be thankful for in the coming year." I put my head in my hands, there at the table among the sauce packets and chopstick wrappers, and sobbed outright with relief and gratitude. The words that penetrated my numb, shocked heart and mind that day are still on my refrigerator where I see them daily, and they are as true now as they were then. That year, and every year since then, has been a gift--a bittersweet gift that cannot be explained, and that I would not trade for anything either more or less, even though it is not a gift I chose. And that, every year, seems like a thing worth celebrating.

Happy Diagnosis Day.