The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,81

worst. He looked me in the eye, put his hand on my shoulder, and declared, “Nothing is going to happen to you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” I was so moved by his obvious concern and his belief that he could somehow affect the course of my disease. That kind of support is priceless.

Ever since I was diagnosed, I’ve learned that so much of life’s hardship becomes more bearable when you are able to build and lean on a network of loyalty, support, and love, and gather around you people (even your contractor) who will stand by you and help you. But the thing is you have to let them in; you have to let them see the heartache, pain, and vulnerability, and not cloak those things in a shameful darkness, and then you have to let those people who care about you help you.

Finally, I asked my oncologist for his blessing. I felt like I needed this most of all; actually, his blessing was the only one that truly mattered to me. Not that he could see the future, exactly, but he knew more about what was inside of me than anyone. His response was rather comical in its briefness in light of how much thought I had given to the cancer in making this decision. “Do it!” he said. Brevity really is the soul of wit. My cancer, this thing that has often felt like it controls every part of me and my life, seemed to be such a nonissue to him in this regard.

And with Dr. A.C.’s blessing, we moved forward. It would be a few months before we could start the construction work, since we still had to decide on the conceptual designs, obtain building and city approvals, and finalize the financing. But signing the contract was the first big step.

It took me two solid years of living with metastatic cancer to realize an important truth: barring some physical pain or other impediment brought on by cancer or its treatment, it isn’t cancer that denies me my dreams; it isn’t cancer that would prevent me from going on vacations or buying a new home or doing anything else that I long to do. Rather, it is a paralyzed mind succumbing to the fear and unpredictability of cancer that would deny me my dreams. In its paralysis, it groups into one category all dreams that are truly gone (such as having another biological child) with dreams that can be reshaped and redefined, or even new dreams that are derivative of a cancer diagnosis. In its paralysis, the mind cannot form contingency plans; it cannot be brave and bold and forward thinking; it cannot accept what is without running from what will be.

In one of the many ironies that have come with having an incurable prognosis, it is as if by accepting the inevitability of my death from this disease, I have freed myself from that paralysis. Similarly, I can move forward now with some degree of certainty; I can plan for myself and my family, for as much as I emphasize living in the here and now, living and loving those whom we love by necessity requires some degree of planning, of thinking about what might be, of dreaming for them if not necessarily for ourselves.

I rejoice in my liberation, in my own courage to move forward, in the rebirth of a dream I once thought was forever lost to me.

Live while you live, my friends.

28

Solitude

I am being brutally honest, as part of my commitment to give voice to all those I know who feel as I do, and to depict the dark side of cancer and debunk the overly sweet, pink-ribbon façade of positivity and fanciful hope and rah-rah-rah nonsense spewed by cancer patients and others, which I have come to absolutely loathe. I believe, as I have always believed, that in honesty—a brutal yet kind and thoughtful honesty—we ultimately find not vulnerability, shame, and disgrace, but liberation, healing, and wholeness. I hope my family and friends do not take offense at this honesty.

In early August 2015, I received some bad scan results, which made for a somewhat difficult couple of weeks. Because bad news seems to come in multiples, a few days later, I learned that my ever-so-historically-reliable tumor marker (CEA) had risen yet again, another 7 points to 29, the largest single increase in a three-week period yet. For me, clicking on that link that reveals the latest