Cancer saved my life #2

My ex-wife sleeping around was not told to get your sympathy, but to begin to tell you how I believe I got cancer. Since stress is now known as the biggest immune suppressant, worse than a shitty diet, stress severely fucks up our bodies. The type of cancer I got, Burkitts Lymphoma, can develop from a very low immune system as many other aliments can. AIDS patients can develop this type of cancer because their immune system is usually shit. Burkitts originated in Africa, with their high rate of AIDS and at that time, poor health care. This all ties into the massive stress cycle I was stuck in at that time. When I found out what she was doing, I was crushed. Crushed in the way that coming from an abusive childhood, I felt I had NO one. My brother Landon was the person I was closest to, but he moved away to college, and we grew apart (pre-cell phone era). I had friends, but I was shallowly social, never really opening up to anyone. My home life was so horrible, and I was so miserable there, but when I went to school it was my escape from all that, I was the funny guy, I could enjoy myself at school and work, I had 2 lives. I had surrounded myself with brick walls, like the fucking Great Wall of China, seriously. I remember writing a suicide note to my brother Landon because I couldn’t take my stepfathers abuse anymore, I thought my brother was the only person that loved me and that I “owed” an explanation to. I planned it right out to a Tee. I was going to run in front of a semi-truck. I worked at a restaurant that was right on the TransCanada Highway and I usually worked until late at night. I planned out the night I was going to hide in the ditch and wait for a semi to be coming at 110km/hr. It would be so fast and over with.  Then something just shocked me, and I thought, “this is silly, no way am I doing this, I only have to tough out a couple more years of living in this hellhole with my mother and stepfather, then I will be in charge of my own fuckin life.” There were several times in my mid-teens I couldn’t take it anymore, I planned out how to kill my stepfather, to me he was the devil, an evil bully that targeted people smaller and weaker than himself. Those plans too, ended with me looking to the future and thinking “just a couple more years of this shit and I’m out”. The hate I had for him was so monstrous and growing daily.  What helped me going later on in my cancer journey, when I was getting the worse of the chemo, I remember I kept thinking, “this isn’t as bad as living with my stepfather, I can do this”. I vividly remember laying in the hospital so sick, getting up to pee was a huge struggle and painful. I survived my childhood, this is nothing. Which actually ended up being a huge advantage to my mindset during chemo. I was very positive and looked forward because of the hell I had been through before this.

I severely struggled in school; I cheated my whole way through. I even stole my friends Ritalin a few times to finish some schoolwork because I thought I was too dumb to concentrate and learn things like the other students in my school. Ritalin was amazing, I once took one before bed and I stayed up all night reading a book and doing a book report about it. It was the day before it was due. I was glued to my desk and was hyper concentrated on my work, I finished it at 7:30 am, just as my alarm was going off to wake me for school. I still wonder what I would have been like if my mother ever had taken me to a doctor for problems in school. I can, with great certainty, say that I would have been prescribed some drugs. My mother and stepfather thought I wasn’t trying, and my teachers thought I was dumb. I wondered how I am going to get anywhere in this world when I’m this dumb. My stepfather constantly reminded me of how I will be a loser my whole life. Now I see the bigger picture and he was talking to himself and how that was a projection on me. Sometimes people drag others down, so they continue being surrounded by similar people, it threatens them to see people succeed. Much later on, I acknowledged that he did want me to be better in a way but couldn’t communicate it without his own issues coming through the words.

I failed a lot of classes; I had one teacher even tell me I had a zero chance of passing so I don’t have to continue coming to class. I, of course, kept going as to not raise awareness to my mother or stepdad about the class. A lot of the classes I didn’t fail I got mercy passes for, meaning, I was close enough, so they bump it up to a 50%. Luckily for me and my future, my ex-wife and I were dating at that time and after my 3rd warning that I was going to fail and not graduate. She started doing my homework for me, obviously my grades went up immediately. The tests, I would barely pass, but my assignments and papers were bringing my average way up. By the time of my graduation ceremony at the end of the year, I got called on stage for the “most improved student” award, there was not a person there more shocked than me. “Holy fucking shit!!” I thought as I walked on stage to get my award. My marks weren’t that high, it’s just they were so low before, my mother was so proud of me. I didn’t feel no remorse, I felt like, fuck this school, fuck these teachers, and fuck this bullshit school system that makes everyone go through these standardized tests, rewarding people with better memorization skills then others. To this day I don’t feel bad, I feel we need extensive work in how we bring up children and young people, telling a monkey he’s dumb if he can’t swim like a fish isn’t a very good way of trying to teach children. Especially not recognizing kids living severe trauma at home. Alot of people don’t realize the huge implications in telling children they’re not smart, they have ADD/ADHD, we will create what we believe, more times than not it is related to a childhood full of stress, trauma, and parents projecting their own traumas on their children, (“When the Body says no” by Dr. Gabor Mate, “The Body Keeps the Score” Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk). I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t until years later that I realized I’m not dumb, and I don’t have a broken brain. I used to think I was just born with a dumb brain, but it’s important to note, I was TAUGHT this. I have since done some research in neurology and brain development with trauma. There are areas of our brains that are late, or fail to develop strictly from stress, child abuse, and/or trauma. I even cheated on the test that got me into college for mechanics, because I knew I would fail but once I got in, I would be fine, because I didn’t struggle learning things that interested me. It’s crazy to think that I had to cheat in school and to get into college, but I did perfectly fine in mechanics and spent almost 20 years being a mechanic and I was very good at it. The only reason I went into mechanics is because my mom was pressuring me to go straight into something after high school. The reason I chose mechanics is because I thought I was too dumb to do anything else and my marks limited my options. I had a natural draw to mechanics because I had an old snowmobile and dirt bike my uncle gave me and I enjoyed riding them, so when they broke, I wanted them fixed. Working on that stuff just seemed to be something in my life that I understood, and I could learn easily, that was a first. When I got my first car, I used to always be tinkering with it. My brother was the shittiest mechanic ever, so I was always helping him with his car too. It just seemed like my only option, and I did enjoy it too. There may even have been a sub conscious reasoning to it. My mother had a very troubled relationship with her father, and he was a mechanic, so did I naturally go that direction to get my mother’s love, acceptance, attention? Possibly.

When I met my ex, I slowly began opening up to her, and eventually gave her everything I had emotionally, (as much as a traumatized teenager could). I now can comprehend that wasn’t enough for her. It’s not her fault, she’s not a bad person, I wasn’t giving her a basic human need… true connection. I wasn’t capable of it. I didn’t know shit about how to truly connect with people. She did as any healthy human should do, seek out their needs and fulfil them, it just happened to look like “cheating”. I struggle with that term now, because who did she cheat? Me? I sure as hell don’t feel cheated now. It was a precious lesson in learning how I feel, not absorbing how everyone around me was feeling. It seemed that I was surrounded by people who were upset for me. They assumed it is hard for us as humans to see the good in a bad situation, partially because we are selfish, or wired for survival. We are constantly examining, “how does this affect me? Why is this happening to me?” These are all normal thought patterns; our brain is just trying to help us survive.  I spent my life learning to be hyper vigilant and trying to protect myself, because I felt no one else was going to, and I didn’t feel safe… ever! In a relationship that encounters cheating, you have to get rid of your ego. I had to think “what did I contribute to this?”, not be a victim and say, “how could you do this to me!”. One is very beneficial to your growth, your progression as a human and the other causes you to keep spinning your wheels in the mud. If you don’t learn you will re-live it until you do. So, I learned that hard and fast that year.

These hard truths didn’t come to me so nice and softly, they hit me more like a missile to the fuckin head. I didn’t see it coming but sure can’t miss it. Getting told you have a rare and aggressive cancer 2 months after your soul connection betrays you, was hard, scary, terrifying, life changing, and all those things. But the sun still rises tomorrow my friends. Nothing in your life, in your control, will stop the sun from rising the next day, so remember that next time you feel alone, or earth shatteringly upset, it will ground you. It helped me tremendously. I used to wake up the next morning after terrible things happened to me in my life, always being so surprised that the sun rose, and that morning came. I still to this day have people tell me that I’m sooo strong and they couldn’t do what I did, I’ll tell you something, yes you could. Give yourself some credit, we are amazing, beautiful creatures, it is our human instinct to fight for our life. You can do it.

So back to where I left off, I had just been told I have cancer and made a cheesy joke about cancelling my haircut appointment because I didn’t want to explore what I truly felt in the moment, which was a terrified little boy. I immediately and instinctively used humor to re-direct the emotions and feelings. I can honestly say I had a couple cries and within a few days the pity party was over. I’m not one for whining and wanting someone else to bare my burdens. I felt alone most of my life to that point, so I was fully prepared to go through cancer treatments alone. My diagnosing doctor told me I had an appointment with the cancer center a couple days later, which was standard practice. Those couple days in between being diagnosed, and my cancer center consultation were pretty normal, I acted as it was any old Tuesday. I went to school and hung out with a friend, normal shit. By this point in my life my biological father had just come back into my life, we weren’t very close because we didn’t even know each other. My dad and stepmom came down and went to the cancer center appointment with me. I was in very good spirits, mostly because I had so much uncertainty in the previous couple months. But now I felt alive, focused, and in charge, even though I just got cancer…

During my appointment in the Regina cancer center, I found out this wasn’t going to be no cake walk. I asked how many days at a time do I have to take off school and work? He looked at me totally puzzled, then looked at the nurse and said, ” didn’t you go over this with him?”. So, he proceeds to tell me that I’m going to spend the next 3-6 months bed ridden… bed ridden? In my head I thought “bitch please!”. I wasn’t no old man, I saw in my head the stereotype of cancer patients on TV that were skinny and fragile, but seriously man, I’m 22 and in good shape. He didn’t know the life I had already been through and survived. The doctor started asking me about my personal life and where do I live? Who would take care of me? what the fuck was he talking about? I started to think that maybe he was actually serious about this bed ridden thing. So, he recommends for me to move to Saskatoon because I have family there to help me and the Oncologist there had some experience with this rare type of cancer. I am told that I will need to move there immediately and go for a consultation at the cancer center, where they will be going deeper into my diagnosis and trying to stage it (where it has spread to) and find the proper plan of action. It was a bit overwhelming, but I was expecting that.

So, I had 2 days to go quit school, move my stuff back to my house in Estevan, and pack a bag for Saskatoon not knowing how long I would be gone. One of the really hard parts at the beginning was asking my wife to move back into our house we had bought. I knew the second I did that I had just given her everything. Which totally pissed me off because I had never had anything my whole life and I had just worked my dick off for the previous 4 years to get to that point. But what choice did I have? I had no money; I was getting just enough to live for school and the second I quit school they quit the payments. So, there I am off to Saskatoon in my sweet sky-blue Ford Escort with a bag of clothes packed, not knowing how long I’d be gone. On my 450 km drive to Saskatoon, I did go through the thought process fully acknowledging that I may never come back. I might die in Saskatoon, I might die of cancer at 22 years old, it sounded crazy, but I acknowledged the possibility. I figured it was healthy to at least know what I was getting into and the possible outcomes. I felt better than ever, cancer can’t be worse than what I’ve been through prior to that.

Author: cancerboy55

I am on a journey of teaching, learning, and listening. View all posts by cancerboy55