Reflections from a Healing Journey
“Some days are diamonds, some days are stones” goes the song John Denver made popular in 1981, but the truth is many days that are stones offer diamonds too. “Life is a hard teacher” someone said, “first comes the experience and then the lesson.” My teacher was melanoma. The learning experience began when my dermatologist’s nurse told me the results of the biopsy of my nose.
My journey has led to healing. Many others are less fortunate with this silent, too often deadly disease. I have the luxury of relief and psychological distance to reflect on the past few months. Many others have not been so fortunate.
To grasp my shock after the nurse’s call, I should say I grew up in Syracuse which climatologically ranks eighth from the bottom of all cities in the U.S. in the percentage of possible sunshine it gets each year. So, if you want to decrease your chances of skin cancer, grow up where I did. Still, don’t forget the sunscreen, as I did.
Since I’d had radiation three years ago for precancerous lesions on my nose, I should not have been surprised. “It cures 85-90 percent of people,” the doctor told me then. Clearly, I was not to be one of them. The only treatment this time required surgery – three of them during which all the skin on my nose was removed and replaced with skin from my forehead, which is of course still 75-year-old skin. So the most I could hope for, cosmetically at least, was to look as old as I already am. Humor, I began to see, was one of the diamonds I needed to call forth to cope with days that are stones.
The nurse’s call was the perfect definition of such a day. Yet the biopsy suggested the cancer was probably localized, another diamond when I calmed down enough to decipher the report without hyperventilating. The biggest barriers to diamonds for me – not just with disease but in life overall - include fear and anxiety.
Surgeries are stones, even when you know they’ll help. But my diamonds included the incredible gains of medical science made possible by health care institutions both of which I too often take for granted. They also included tossing my assumption that surgeons just want to cut and skip the course on bedside manner. My surgeon and his team were incredibly considerate. He gave me his personal email, responding to frantic questions with lightning speed and reassuring gentleness.
That I looked like a boxer who suffered a TKO in round 10, have swelling that will take more weeks to disappear and had the shock of testing positive for COVID as I awaited my second surgery were stones too, but even stones can make way for diamonds when recovery is likely. To find diamonds when you’re not that lucky is something I’ve long admired in people who achieve it.
My journey has also taught me that you can love the person you chose to share your life with even more than you thought possible. The strain on her never showed. Her love was my sun during the day (doctor’s orders: no sunlight on my face) and my nightlight after dark, when having to sleep nearly sitting up and on my back so my wounds could drain was the price of going to bed. For being that diamond, I forgave her for laughing at the single hair that started growing out of my new nose (the skin came from my forehead, remember?).
All serious illnesses spread ripples to those connected to us. Those closest to me became closer still, the brightest and largest of diamonds. Yet even people I never expected would give my illness much thought because of their own busy lives actually did. Their caring told me I underestimated them, which was unfair and makes me want to do more to justify their caring.
I also learned that some of our constant diamonds are the simplest experiences and capabilities of life – which take on new meaning and pleasure when you lose them and if you’re fortunate enough to get them back. The ability to enjoy let the sun warm your face, to sleep, to blow your nose and to see clearly - because you can’t put glasses on a swollen nose swathed in Vaseline to keep it moist. (Well, actually I could after the first month if I didn’t mind them sliding down my nose to my lips.)
The melanoma-driven stones are mostly gone – perhaps for good or at least for now. Most who’ve had cancer know the hard truth that it may come back.In my case, there’s a small (5%) chance that some of those cells escaped before surgery to make their way elsewhere.Yet the diamonds will never be gone unless I let them fade away, and for them I am both humbled and grateful.I can’t predict what stones await, but I can promise that these diamonds have enriched my life and that I intend to let them continue to do so.
Photo Credit: Carol Donsky Newell
