The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,32
to find a cure. Diagnosed at age twenty-eight with aggressive Stage IV disease that involved widespread metastases, she was given one year to live, two at most. She was known for her warrior attitude, relentless positivity, and even enthusiasm for fighting the disease—so seemingly fearless, positive, and enthusiastic was she that she never really wrote of her fears or sadness, and instead seemed almost happy about the “opportunity” cancer presented in her life—which to me verged on the delusional.
To those of us who followed her progress, it certainly seemed that until the day she died she truly believed that she would beat the cancer, that the cancer had picked the wrong person, that, in her words, “Cancer, your time is up.”
She had been quiet publicly about her decline in part because people believed that by virtue of her unyielding ferocity in the face of this deadly disease, she would indeed somehow win her war. The fact that her body had succumbed alarmed many who drew inspiration from her and felt that if the fierce WunderGlo (her chosen nickname) couldn’t overcome, how could they?
And then there is lovely Kathryn, a tall, fifty-something Minnesotan who has lived long past her initial prognosis. She’s been a dedicated source of support and information for others and a devout builder of the colorectal cancer community—she was the one who found me and brought me into Colontown (a support group on Facebook). I’ve met Kathryn but don’t know her well at all, unless you count the real intimacy of her writing on Colontown. I admire her brave decision to stop all chemo a few months ago, and I admire how she is spending the last days of her life on this earth, at home in hospice care, with her family and friends, even as her body is slowly being starved to death because a tumor is obstructing the path into her stomach. Even as she is constantly vomiting what little water she can ingest, she makes the effort to inform everyone as she has always done of the details of her medical condition and her mental state, which is calm and gracefully accepting of her coming death. In so doing, she is demystifying the process of dying, helping all of us who will also one day die be less afraid.
In so doing, she is giving those of us who love her a chance to bid her farewell, to say our piece.
Those of us who face cancer, any type of cancer, are prone to use the metaphor and language of war to describe the way we deal with our disease; I myself have described chemo as the most powerful weapon in my arsenal, the receipt of bad news as a defeat in one battle among many, and all of my supporters as my army. In many respects, it’s an appropriate and useful metaphor because it lends a visual image to an often long and arduous process with an uncertain outcome in which the mind and body are brutalized; it fires up passion and gets the adrenaline flowing and can push one to keep enduring. But what happens when the body can no longer tolerate further treatment? What happens when death is the outcome of the war and not life? People hate to think that Kathryn, Gloria, and John have ultimately “lost” their personal wars against cancer, and yet there is no denying that reality; John and Gloria are gone, and Kathryn will soon follow.
As I’ve said before, battling cancer occurs in not just the physical realm, but also the nonphysical realm, where the mind and spirit are challenged to find the will to keep fighting, to feel happiness despite the sadness, to find light amid the darkness, to laugh through the fear, to live with abandon and joy under the specter of death. I hope that no matter how difficult the physical war becomes for me and no matter how I may struggle through the nonphysical war, I will always confront my disease with the same kind of courage, honesty, grace, and acceptance that Kathryn has exhibited, she who learned so much about her disease and its treatments, both established and experimental; she who shared that knowledge as no other; she who recognized when chemo was compromising the quality of her life during the little time she had remaining; she who chose to accept with dignity the overwhelming power of the cancer in her body.
Cancer is a force of nature that acts within the human