MOVING ON FROM CANCER [R, 8-19-21]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

“I read somewhere that people who went to support group had a 50% better chance of getting well. I read somewhere else that patients who kept a journal of their feelings had a 50% better chance of getting well. I’m no dummy. That’s 100%! So, I kept a journal of my feelings, and I went to support group.”

That was always part of my talk at cancer groups and conferences. I wanted to encourage cancer patients to keep journals and go to support group.

My journal became Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole. My support group at Carle Cancer Center in Urbana, IL, became the source of so many inspiring friends. “Cancer survivor” became my identity.

When I started going to support group, it had been running for twenty years, started by Everett and Rae Endsley, when Everett was a lung cancer patient. With only a few necessary absences, they had come to every meeting for all those years, even though Everett had been declared cured long before. They always came, they said, just in case a new patient had come and no one else was there that night. They wanted to be sure every bewildered survivor had someone who would listen to their fears and hopes.

I was inspired by their commitment, their continuing part of the cancer community, their continuing identity as cancer survivors.

But I was also inspired by Lynn Ringer--the co-founder of CanSurmount, and the subject of the book, I’m A Patient, Too--who became a personal friend through a summer Helen and I spent at Iliff Theological Seminary in Denver. Lynn told us that summer that there had been a time when she had to step away from the cancer community, when she had to learn to be a person without that cancer survivor identity.

I didn’t quite understand that then. Cancer survivor was my identity! I didn’t think I could survive outside that community. It wasn’t just the support, but the affirmation. Going through old files now, I’m amazed at how that identity consumed me. Good grief, I saved a lot of cancer stuff!

I have whole file drawers of reviews of my cancer book, in all sorts of periodicals, from local to national. Whole pages from that book were often reprinted in newspapers and magazines and other books. Articles were written not just about the book but about me. I was interviewed on radio and TV stations from Texas to the Carolinas. It was translated into Czech and Japanese, and HarperAudio did a spoken edition. They were going to get Jerry Orbach to read it, but I felt it needed to be read by a cancer patient, specifically the author, and so sent them a tape. They agreed and flew Helen and me to NYC to record it.

 

I was invited to speak all over the country, and looking at the number of programs I saved from those conferences, apparently I never turned one down! There were so many that I don’t even remember some of them, but I know I went, because I also saved the airplane ticket stubs. Most of that was due to my book, but also I was listed in the speakers bureau for National Cancer Survivors Day.

I got hundreds of letters from patients, nurses, doctors, ministers, social workers, family members, writers--telling me how helpful my book or some conference presentation was, telling of their own experiences, asking me for prayers. Some were from well-known people in cancer circles: Bernie Siegel, Rachel Remen, Jim Valvano.

As time went by, I began to think more like Lynn than like Everett & Rae. My survivor identity would always be important to me, but I couldn’t live in it alone forever. I needed to move on from a cancer identity that was so exclusive of everything else, and I did.

I still needed to be in community, for we have identity only in relationships, but no community goes on forever.

Part of being old is fading out of the communities that had meaning for us in earlier times, both so that younger people can have their turn in those places, but also because it is a gift.

For a long time, I identified as a cancer survivor. I look at all the articles and fliers and programs and letters I saved, and I am reluctant to put them into the recycling bin, because that was such an important part of my life. But they don’t represent who I am now.

Now I’m a life survivor. It’s a good community to be part of. I don’t need mementoes, reminders, because I live in the eternal now.

John Robert McFarland

My pattern is to post a column every other day, but I’m not sure if I’ll be some place that I can post on Saturday, so…