"I didn’t have a choice.” Nine years later, after three surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation, my wife and I are still having the same conversation. Diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer at the age of 37, with two young kids and an anxious husband, she “sucked it up,” as she would say, and put herself through a year of debilitating and painful treatment all to eliminate the creeping disease that threatened her life.
I contend, and still do, that it was a choice. She could have given up, taken to her bed, or allowed the fear of the cancer’s spread to overwhelm her ability to make medical decisions. She tells me I’m wrong. “There was no valor in this,” she explains, “no other option. I did what was necessary to get through.” My wife is tough, one of the best copers I know, and yet she still resists the badge of strong or brave.
How can this be? Virtually every profile of a cancer patient speaks of her “brave fight.” Especially now in October, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are reminded that multiple women will get and eventually “beat” the disease. Shouldn’t we celebrate them as brave heroes of a marathon battle?
The truth is that it hardly feels like a valiant fight when you’re in the middle of cancer treatment. No one I’ve encountered wakes up the middle of the night thinking, “I’m really brave to be doing this.” The reality is more like a soul-sucking fear. Fears, really. Fear of losing the battle, of course, but also fear of lost normalcy, of wondering whether a partner will still find her attractive once the scars heal, or whether a muscle ache, bump or bruise will ever be seen as a minor annoyance again instead of a warning sign of recurrence. There are also the smaller fears that exhaust the spirit — whether the nausea from chemo will ever stop or if the absolute exhaustion from radiation will ever end. When many days feel like walking through water wearing leaden boots, it is easy to be consumed by fear. Meanwhile, family members are dealing with their own fears. Fear of holding the household together, of keeping a job while tending to a sick loved one, and the worst fear of all — the image of a life without the patient in it. As much as we try to push these thoughts out of our minds, they are an ever-present reminder of the stakes of the battle.
People handle those fears any number of ways. For my wife it was to put her head down and get through the treatment. A lifelong country music fan, she lived the line of that song, “If you’re going through hell, keep on going.” But what she doesn’t see is how strong and brave she really was. How many of us can confront our worst fears, can live with them for months on end, and emerge intact, if not more buoyant, at the end? It’s that daily struggle with fear, a personal, emotional and vulnerable match, that makes cancer treatment a true battle. Resilience in the face of such adversity is altogether a rare gift.
So, yes, let’s celebrate breast cancer survivors as brave and strong, for surviving means much more than outliving the disease. Choice or not, they confronted life’s greatest fears at a time of intense vulnerability. That’s as courageous and brave as the superheroes we glorify in the movies, and yet they live among us. So, if you truly wish to honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month, tell the survivor you know that she is strong and gutsy, that she is your hero. My hero may not feel that she had a choice, but what she did saved her life — and our family’s as well.