Be like Mery

I then remind myself that this strong distaste for battle language in the field of cancer is my own. I understand that, for some, this language is a form of empowerment. While I have never been to a military boot camp, nor have I been deployed to far off lands, chemotherapy often makes one believe that they’re in the trenches - that there is no way out. Unlike warfare, however, one does not train for having cancer. There is no winning or losing this sick and twisted game because it is never fair in the first place. To say, “You will win this fight” or “She lost her battle,” suggests that, through sheer willpower, we are capable of “beating” our cellular opponent—a part of ourselves that has gone rogue—when this is simply not the case.

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The mental and spiritual strength that one possesses is a powerful medicine that, in my mind, can hopefully result in more favorable outcomes in disease progression. During my first six months of chemotherapy, I believed myself to be unstoppable. I attended college parties, travelled every chance I got, graduated with my Bachelor’s degree, and began a Master’s program. Then, after six months of chemotherapy and eight weeks of radiation therapy, I finally had a break from treatment. This break was indefinite; however, I entered it knowing that it would one day come to an end. My one year “tumor-versary” on February 1st came and went and, while I felt some morbid sense of achievement for having lived past my doctor’s prognosis, my back began to throb. My all too familiar cellular opponent was making itself known. My friend Chris and I rode the train into Boston on a frigid Tuesday in February, where I met my nurse practitioner with a list of reasons as to why I needed an MRI of my back. The next morning, as I sat opening and closing my patient portal app for updates, my phone rang. In an instant, I recognized the voice on the other end to be my oncologist. “The radiologist called me. He 's concerned. I am too. There are lesions on your spine. I’m sorry, Sarah.” “It’s okay,” I respond, void of emotion, still numb to the weight of the news. 

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What had been a three month break from treatment was a blissful reprieve from constant travels to Boston for medical care. I travelled to four new countries with my sister, went out with my college friends, and spent the New Year in Spain with my host family just as I had the year prior. I allowed myself to believe the illusion that this was how life would remain. Despite the knowledge of my terminal diagnosis, I began to feel a sense of how things had been before illness, making myself at home in this safe haven. Yet, despite my active mind and body, my Mediterranean diet, and a strong will to continue “beating the odds,” my disease progressed. I am back on chemotherapy now, and I do not feel near close to the superhuman I was last spring. I am tired at baseline, I have chronic pain, and my body has grown dependent on oxycodone. 

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On far too many occasions, our willpower, coupled with all of the chemotherapy regimens, radiation therapy, and clinical trials in the world cannot save us from our inevitable mortality. During an interview with a friend of mine, Tasha Nathan, who went through treatment for rhabdomyosarcoma, I learned of her close friend, Mery, who passed away as a result of her cancer in 2023. Tasha recounted: 

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Being with her in hospice, I can tell you, she lived more than I did. I've never met someone who had to adjust the way that they thought about their future more than her. It was just one thing after the other, and each time she would be like, “Okay, well maybe this won't happen, but I could do this.” I didn't know her that long, but she's one of my best friends. I never met someone who had to adjust the idea in their brain of what their future meant so much. Even in hospice, she was like, “Well, maybe this might happen. We never know. A miracle could happen, and I could do this, and maybe in a month, I'll be doing this.” And I was like, “You were literally just told you have weeks to live.”

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Mery had a fiery passion for life. She lives on as an example of unadulterated willpower and optimism. If determination alone were enough to save Mery, she would still be here to live out the many plans she had created for herself. She did not “lose her battle.” She won at life. 

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Like Mery, we do have the power to continue to better ourselves as the disease grows within our bodies. We are capable of adapting to the incessant changes that cancer causes. We can maintain a positive outlook on the lives we live despite the pain and loss with which we’ve been faced. These efforts help to better our quality of life and, in turn, could play a role in buying s more time. However, we cannot run from an unavoidable reality. 

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We must stop attaching moral value to survival outcomes. For me, this starts with removing battle language from conversations about cancer. A year and a half ago, my medical oncologist, unsure of my outcome, suggested that the prognosis of my disease ranged from three months to a year. Either my ghost is writing this, or I’m still here. I wiggle my toes just to be sure. “Yeah, it's me.” I laugh for a second before I am overcome by a dark cloud of guilt. I have felt this before. I felt this on New Year’s as I entered into a year I was told I wouldn’t live to see. I felt it on February First, as I celebrated my “tumor-versary” with friends over drinks and tapas. I feel it every time I watch a peer on the internet succumb to the disease. Survivor’s guilt. 

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One is a cancer survivor from the day they are diagnosed with cancer until the day they die. If we limit “survivor” to those who are deemed “no evidence of disease,” we convert “survivorship” into a status label that separates the living from the dead, the well from the ill. On the other hand, if we begin to view “survivorship” as the day-to-day journey of someone who is experiencing or has experienced a cancer diagnosis, we celebrate the little joys of each day, while also acknowledging the challenges that come with moving forward as our counterparts pass on. Regardless, we are left to ask ourselves, “Why am I still here, and they aren’t?” We torture ourselves with a “why” that doesn’t exist. Tasha, in her recent interview, acknowledges:

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There's no difference between me and [Mery], other than genetic mutations and the way our bodies responded to treatment, and it doesn't make me more of a survivor than her. We had the same hopes and dreams, and she deserved to be here just as much as me.

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How heartbreaking yet how beautiful it is to remember that we all have similar dreams, that we are all people who strive toward something, who love, and yearn to be loved. We all deserve to live out these dreams, hope toward a better future, and feel safe in ourselves. Cancer, while a part of us, is an inanimate and erratic abnormality that is blind to our most profound desires to live. I beg and bargain with the disease. Please, leave me alone long enough for me to write a book. Please, do not take away my independence. I will settle on dying young if you let me experience falling in love just once. But the pestilence is indifferent. It does not care about my ambitions nor does it soften at the thought that I may never find the love of my life. Just as cancer does not pay mind to my pleading, cancer does not kill on the basis of who has more life to live or more dreams to fulfill. Cancer is a blind thief. 

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I understand that cancer is unfair, that it does not discriminate nor care about one’s feelings. I understand all of this while still asking myself each day, “Why me?” Some days, this question is a pity party where cancer and I are the only guests. We eat our feelings because anything else would make us nauseous, until we realize that our feelings also make us green in the face. We watch movies like “My friends are moving on, and I’m stuck in the same place” and “Dying in your 20s Sucks.” I try to send the party guest home, but I am told that he lives with me. 

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Other days, the question “Why me?” is a funeral. There are dozens of oak caskets and, as I approach each one, I find a familiar face. “How do I know you?,” I ask. These faces are ones I have seen at AYA (Adolescent and Young Adult) conferences, in clinic, and on social media. However, I feel as if I have known each of them my whole life, as if, at one point, we were one. We occupy distinct bodies and come from unique backgrounds; yet, we are human beings with beliefs, ideas, passions, and dreams. We know what it is to experience immense pain. We have come to learn, at a young age, that pain is the inevitable cost of living and, yet, through even the worst pain, we grasp on to our hopes and dreams and move onward with the march of time. My tears fall upon the burial plots. We are the same. 

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We do not fight a battle. We live as fully as possible in the midst of a torrential injustice. We do not survive only when we are told we are cancer free. We survive every day of our lives until survival is no longer an option. We are not only cancer warriors. We are artists, teachers, students, friends, and lovers. We will never lose our fight with cancer. When we die, it will be with the knowledge that cancer is a rogue and unfair disease that is unsympathetic to our willpower. However, until then, we will continue to live for ourselves and for our peers who have passed on, we will continue to love life even when it hurts, and we will continue to make plans regardless of our expiration date. We will continue to be like Mery.