Tips for coping with cancer (and life)

Also, thoughts on my family without me

“Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.”

Today I was interviewed by Jeffery Giesener of Jewish Culture and Holocaust Remembrance about my experiences with cancer, as well as a bit about writing. He’s creating a film from interviews with a range of people fighting all kinds of cancer—including himself. I always enjoy speaking with Jeffery and today was no exception, even if we were talking about my least favorite topic. We talked about my diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis as well as my coping mechanisms, things that might help others with cancer. I’ve written about these before, but in case you’re a new subscriber or you want them all in one place, here’s a pithy list:

Find (or continue) work that feels significant to you. For me, this is writing. For you, it may be composing music, looking after pets or children, designing log cabins, raising chickens, or, say, researching a cure for ovarian cancer. I never feel further from my illness than when I am writing about it.

Mentor and help others. Nothing helps more than turning my focus away from myself, towards other people. It cheers me to feel of use to the world. I currently mentor two graduate students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which I find infinitely rewarding (and boy are they having an interesting year…). I much prefer thinking about other people’s problems to thinking about my own. I am currently reading Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, and her narrator claims that “Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.” I tend to agree, at least with the first bit. I like hot baths for the first five minutes, and then I get restless and bored and my heartbeat speeds up and I panic and get out. So maybe not the baths.

Stay connected with your community. This is critical. It helps to feel part of a group of people who care about you and who perhaps share some of your interests. I rely heavily on my literary community and my friends, although most of them live in other countries.

Make yourself leave the house. Most days I just want to stay home and work. But many days in a row of isolation leads to deepening despair. Even when you are not feeling up to it, make yourself walk across your village or city block or your field and spend some time with another person. It doesn’t even have to be a close friend, as long as the person is a fellow human you can connect with for a few shared moments. I always feel better after interacting with other people.

Exercise. You have heard plenty from me on this topic! But find something you love to do, a way to move your body that feels good, and do it every day. (For me: ballet, yoga, hiking, pilates, actually anything)

Keep yourself busy. For me, this means as much work as possible. But it helps me even to have one or two appointments or meetups in a day; they lend the day structure and help me organize my time.

Spend time looking at greenery. This could be a city park, a view from a window, or a walk in the woods. Anything green. It helps—there’s plenty of research to back this up.

Breathing exercises. Okay, I don’t always do these. But when I am intensely anxious or stressed, I go straight into them. They send signals to your nervous system that it doesn’t have to freak out, that all will be fine. Which it will be once you calm down. Breathing exercises once kept me from miscarrying when I was held hostage in Yemen while six months pregnant. (That’s what it took to convince me of their efficacy). But that’s another story.

Read. Below my computer I have pasted a quote from James Baldwin. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” Yes, yes, yes.

Rereading this list, I note that these are things that probably are good for everyone, not just those of you with cancer.

Jeffery encouraged me to keep researching hospitals that might have something new to offer me. When I explained that I had ruled out the US for financial (and logistical) reasons, he said there must be places that would want to treat me, and that if I kept putting the word out and poking around perhaps I would discover a magical benefactor who would offer to fly me across the world and pay for experimental trials in another country. He made it sound like this was a reasonable thing to expect. So, here’s me announcing I’m open to the idea! When I said I hated researching trials and treatments online, as it depresses me and makes me panicky to read about my illness, he said, “but think of your daughter. Surviving for her is worth going through the research.” And he’s right about that.

In the quaintly quirky I Capture the Castle, the narrator says of her family, “Miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other. Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.” It’s true. Tim and Theo and I cannot afford to be unkind to each other.

After dinner one night this week, Tim and I sat talking and I said I had been feeling sad, worrying that I didn’t do enough to make him feel loved and appreciated, as much as he should feel loved and appreciated. I worried about being difficult. Worried about how illness has altered our relationship. He told me that I should stop worrying about him. And that there hasn’t been a single second of our lives, not ever, when he hasn’t known I am the person for him. “Even when I’m cranky? Like in Montpellier?” I said. “Even then,” he replied. “Not a moment of doubt.”

I told him that Troy and I had spent our therapy session talking about how he might be after I die. How he will take care of himself and Theo. I need my network of friends, they are as essential to me as breath. But Tim does not have the same needs. He is very happy in his own company and in isolation. As for friends, I am enough. But when I am not here? Who will he talk to? Besides, he may have different feelings about being alone when he is grieving. It hurts my heart to think of him alone in this big stone house. It’s so quiet. I don’t want him to be alone. He says he will be fine, but how does he know? I am glad that he at least has his siblings. And then there is Theo. I have no doubt he will look after her. And I hope that both of them will reach out to my friends for additional support when they need it. I have to make a list for them. Like a parent leaving kids with a babysitter. In case of emergency call.

Troy and I came to no conclusions, because conclusions are not what we do. Tim concluded our conversation last night with, “so you don’t need to worry about me. You can stop worrying about me.” But I can’t. I will continue worrying about you, I said. Of course I will.

It’s strange to be thinking about this when I feel relatively well. I have recovered from chemo. I have energy. Baby eyelashes are starting to emerge from my top lids. I am working more than ever. The only thing wrong is my bowels, which haven’t worked properly since last August. They are a constant reminder of the invader in my body. Of my body’s distress about this invader.

It’s another liminal space, this time between chemo and my next scan. This time between treatment and an unknown and unpredictable future. You’d think I’d be good at liminal spaces by now.

When Tim and I recently discussed how much I was struggling in France, with life in the country, I said, “the thing is, everywhere we have ever lived had a definitive end. No matter how unhappy I was, no matter what problems I encountered in any of our countries, I knew we would be moving on in three or four years. I knew all the problems were temporary. Now there is no new country on the horizon, no new place to look forward to. And I find I long for a new country in our future.”

I suppose Death is a new, undiscovered country. But I am not looking forward to it.

Sometimes I don’t know how scared I am until the vegetable drawer sticks and I overreact with a string of furious curses.