A Singer's Perspective on Cancer

As someone who fought cancer while growing a baby inside of me, there were about a million side effects that I struggled with. I had morning sickness and chemo sickness. I had pregnancy fatigue and chemo fatigue. I had gestational diabetes due to steroid therapy, along with a constant craving for sweets due to both the pregnancy and the steroids. I could spend all day listing the symptoms and side effects I endured, and the list would have barely been started.

However, there's one no one warned me about. One that no one could've ever predicted. One that may never leave me.

You see, I've been a musician my whole life. I've spent more money studying music than most sane people would be able to guess. I have a degree in music that I sank tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours of my life into. My mother says I started singing to her when she was pregnant with me, and that I never really stopped. Singing was my passion; it was my whole life for most of my life.

Then I got cancer. The mass started in my chest and worked its way up to my esophagus, simultaneously cutting off my air supply and limiting my vocal range. It's hard to sing when you can't breathe or even get your vocal chords to work efficiently.

I used to be a worship pastor. I've lead worship services. I've sang in concerts that lasted over an hour. I've participated in rehearsals that lasted for three hours or more. I had a singing range that was the envy of anyone who understood what a singing range was.

My husband and I were transitioning between churches when I got cancer. I hadn't been employed in the music industry for quite a while, but I still sang for fun every chance I got.

But then...I literally couldn't sing anymore. I didn't talk about it. It wasn't really a secret, I just couldn't emotionally handle it. I couldn't even admit it to myself. I went a year with little to no music in my life before I was able to croak out anything again.

I am now in remission and can sing again. I still don't really have much of a range, and my lung capacity is still a joke. I'll probably never be musically employed or participate in a choir again. I probably wouldn't be able to, even if I wanted to.

But this isn't all sad. I've found a new use for my love of music.

My daughter was born two months early due to the cancer and subsequent treatments. She had a month-long stay in the NICU. From the first time I got to hold her, I started singing to her, and haven't stopped since. I sing to her when she wakes up in the morning. I sing to her when I put her down for a nap. I sing to her when I put her to sleep at night. Her life is now filled with music.

Singing to her, even if I feel like it's ridiculously substandard compared to the quality I used to be able to produce, has brought me more joy than any performance I have ever given. I can fill the joy of my life with the joy of my life. I can saturate my daughter's life with music, teach her to love it as much as I do.

I may never again have the range, endurance, or power that I used to have when I sing. I've come to realize there are certain things cancer can take from you and never give back. But I fought for something cancer couldn't take and never will: the love of daughter who brings me more joy than anything else ever could.

Revenge of the Bad Days

I’m progressing further into my pregnancy. I’m almost into my third trimester now. This has led to an overabundance of raging pregnancy hormones in my body, which makes it harder than ever to handle the bad days.

Sometimes I’m still not convinced people even believe I have these bad days. And I don’t want people thinking I’m something I’m not. I deal with the same fears and doubts and insecurities that every cancer patient does. I try my best to be positive about this situation every chance I get, but sometimes I’m just downright scared. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in that hospital room where the news was first handed to me, dealing with the same unknown factors I was then, worried about what’s going to happen to my husband, my baby, my family, if the worst should happen.

I’m not back in that hospital room. I know I have every reason to believe that the baby and I will come through this just perfectly and stronger than ever. But when the pregnancy hormones are raging, when the steroids also take my emotions for a joy ride, when steroids also rob me of my sleep…I just can’t reason my way through all this anymore. Add to that chemo brain. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it’s a side effect of chemo treatments. You become robbed of your short term memory and reasoning skills. Sometimes it takes me five minutes to think of one word, if that word even comes to me then. Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of a sentence talking to someone and will completely forget what the conversation is even about. I also have pregnancy brain on top of this, which is essentially the same thing as chemo brain.

Sometimes it just feels like I’m losing my mind.

And now I’m getting closer to labor and delivery. I don’t even know when that’ll be. I have an official due date but I’ve been told I won’t carry that long. They want to induce so the doctors will have as much control over the situation as possible because my case is so risky. With my immune system being compromised because of cancer and cancer treatments, we have to be careful how we go about this. There’s also the fact that I’m on blood thinners. There’s also the fact that I have gestational diabetes due to steroids. So…my doctors have to fight it out amongst themselves as to when they want to deliver the baby based on how I’m breathing (between the mass and the baby pushing on my internal organs) and how big the baby is getting.

There is so much to worry and be scared about right now.

So the bad days have become more frequent. I keep fighting through them as well as I can but honestly…I’m kind of just ready to get labor (which sounds scarier all the time) over with so I can finish treatments and get back to my life. Get down to the business of being a mother. I know my life will never be the same as it was. I will have a child and will deal with cancer after care for the rest of my life. I’ve heard that the cancer and some of the treatments leave life long side effects, too.

So I’ll find a new normal eventually. 

I’m so grateful for all the encouragement I get from everyone in my life. I’m grateful for my amazing husband who has so selflessly been putting up with all my crazy and helping and supporting me through all of this. I’m grateful for my parents who make come as often as they can to take me to treatments and help my husband and I take care of the house and get it ready for the baby. And then there’s my husband’s mother who comes on the weekends as often as she can for the same purpose. My brother’s wife, who is a nurse, has plans to be here after the birth so she can help during treatments and take care of the baby as well.

I feel guilty for having bad days when I have so much going on to be thankful for, and so many people helping out and praying for me.

Maybe I should focus on that instead.

​Why I Joke About Having Cancer

It has come to my attention that a lot of people are made uncomfortable by my level of comfort with the fact that I have cancer. It has also been brought up that some people are in fact offended by the fact that not only am I remarkably comfortable with this state of being, but I also tend to make a lot of jokes about it. Now I understand that some people will always be offended by this sort of thing, but I'd like to explain my side of things.

I have cancer. I have cancer and one of the most sarcastic senses of humor you can imagine. I've always dealt with hard things in my life with that sense of humor in tact whenever I could. It's not a defense mechanism, and I'm not avoiding dealing with anything. Seriously, I have cancer. You can't really be in denial for very long about that even if you want to. 

But that's also no reason to go through the process angry or sad or depressed all the time. Yes, bad days happen. I've spoken about that before. But happiness is a state of mind, not a set of circumstances, and I made up my mind the very first day that I was going to handle this with as much humor and strength as I could possibly muster.

So...enter cancer jokes.

Like for real, I made a cancer joke that very first day when I was told how rare my diagnosis is. I told the room that I find it funny that I can't even do cancer normally. Right there from my hospital bed.

I joke about having cancer because my situation is so cosmically unlikely to happen. I joke about it because at times if I can't see the humor in what's happening to me, I'd get lost in the despair of what's happening to me. You make your own choices about how you respond to the situations in your life. I choose laughter.

I do not take my situation lightly. I don’t take cancer lightly at all. I realize, I dare say more than many people, the gravity of this situation. That is arguably why I joke about it. I’ve been told by many medical professionals that my attitude about this situation will go a long way towards aiding in my healing. I don’t think it’s just a myth that facing illness with a positive attitude and a sense of humor helps you get better. I’ve witnessed it in my own life.

My papa (grandfather on my mother’s side) has had a plethora of medical issues for many years now. He has been told several times for one reason or another that he didn’t have long to live, and he has outlived the timeline given by every single doctor to tell him that. Every time he faces a new ailment he faces it with his head held high and a smart remark in his arsenal (I get my sense of humor from him). Just days before I was diagnosed, my papa had to have one of his legs amputated. When he was given the news, he immediately started making jokes about his socks lasting twice as long now. 

My papa is my hero.

If I can face the entirety of this cancer journey with as much good humor as my papa has faced everything he’s been through, I think I’ll consider this a success. I think it’s situations like this that show who you really are as a person, anyway. I want to be the type of person who manages to see the good in any situation and keeps my good humor regardless of my life’s circumstances. 

The Road So Far

Sometimes it feels as though I’ve had cancer all my life. Like I’ve been living with this diagnosis from the time I was born. Sometimes it feels like I was just told yesterday, and like I’m still adjusting to the new realities of my life. In reality, it hasn’t even been three months yet since I received the news. I guess there has just been that much activity.

Right now I’m still in somewhat of a holding pattern as far as the battle is concerned. I have received four rituxan treatments so far, which is part of the chemo cocktail but not a chemo treatment in and of itself, and one full chemo treatment, as well. We are still taking the chemo treatments one step at a time because they don’t want my blood levels to get to far off, which is a big concern for my doctors. I was anemic before we started chemo, and they’re worried if we do too much chemo, I might have to get a blood transfusion. And there is of course the ever-present goal of making sure the baby is ok!

As far as the progression of the cancer itself, we received the amazing news a few weeks ago that the rituxan treatments were able to shrink the mass by a full third! We and the doctors were all amazed by this, as they were simply hoping that the rituxan would simply hold the mass off and buy us more time before starting chemo. Now I’m excited to see just how much progress we can make against the cancer with the full chemo treatments!

I’ve been able to take myself off my oxygen a bit since the mass shrank. The mass was situated in my chest in such a way that it was pushing on my heart and lungs, making it difficult for me to breathe. Since it shrank I’m able to go quite a while without needing assistance to breathe, even when I’m up and moving around. My energy levels and weight have still been fluctuating quite a bit, and my eating is erratic at best from week to week, but every ultrasound we’ve done of the baby shows that she is growing at a perfect rate, so as long as that keeps up my doctors say we should be ok!

So that’s a bit of an update on me so far. I am currently 20 weeks pregnant, the baby is growing nicely and the cancer is shrinking nicely. We have so much to be thankful for on this journey, despite how terrifying it sometimes can seem. One of these days I will sit down and simply write a blog about how much we really do have to be thankful for, an itemized list of how blessed we’ve been even with a cancer diagnosis.

Top Three Things to Never Say to a Woman Who is Pregnant and Has Cancer

I get the feeling that people fall into one of two camps where this topic is concerned. Either they think these comments are either completely innocent or they consider it unthinkable to even consider saying or asking someone in my situation these things. So I’m going to approach this from a humorous/sarcastic standpoint, trying to avoid seriously offending anyone who may or may not have made these comments to me. But it still needs to be said, so here we go!

1) The offending question: did you know you had cancer when you got pregnant?

a.      The snarky answer: Are you freaking serious!? Yes, OF COURSE I wanted to bring an innocent child into the line of fire here! It’s not enough that MY life is at stake here, why not endanger an innocent baby in the meantime, making this WHOLE process harder on me (and the aforementioned innocent infant) than it has to be!!

b.      Real talk time: Seriously, this brings into serious question my sanity, and also raises questions as to whether someone should call child welfare on me instantaneously. It’s incredibly offensive to imply that I would intentionally do something like that, whether the person asking the question realizes it or not. Just…think first, k? K.

    2) The offending question: will any of this (treatments/tests/procedures/etc) hurt/endanger the baby?

a.      The snarky answer: Oh yeah, definitely. And? If I have to go down, might as well take someone with me!!

b.      Real talk time: everything that we have done and are going to do is only done because the benefits outweighed the risk, usually because the alternative was ME FREAKING DYING!! Believe it or not, same as me not intentionally bringing a child into the world under these conditions, I do not, in fact, exactly relish the idea of putting said child into danger during the one time this poor child is supposed to be the safest she’ll ever be in her life. The fact that she’s instead possibly in the greatest danger she’ll ever be in breaks my heart. But if we were to do nothing, the alternative is me dying, in which case she would die too. And the thought of that breaks my heart even more.

    3) Why aren’t you working/what do you even do all day?

a.      The snarky answer: Work is overrated and boring and getting cancer to get out of it seemed like so much more fun! Seriously, who wouldn’t want to stay at some battling cancer/pregnant/and treatment side effect symptoms day in and day out, all day every day!? As to what I do, obviously just take advantage of this time to be lazy all day because I’m definitely not busy fighting cancer and growing a baby and dealing with all the pain and discomfort that implies. It’s like a party every day of my life right now!

b.      Real talk time: friends, growing a baby is freaking HARD. Fighting cancer is harder. Doing both at once at the same time is nearly impossible. And I wasn’t kidding when I was talking about all the symptoms I have to deal with. In fact, my immune system is pretty much completely shot at this point in time. You see, the cancer is in my immune system, and some of my treatments compromise it even more. That was one of the deciding factors in my doctors ordering me to stay home while battling cancer. I can’t even go out very often because I have to avoid places with lots of people. (Also I’m on oxygen and going out is a huge hassle anyway, lol.)

Obviously most the time these questions are not asked from a malicious place. But they do get burdensome to answer after a while, especially the ones that unwittingly call into question my very humanity. And sometimes I don’t take offense at all if it’s coming from someone I’m close to, or if it’s obvious that they don’t mean it in a bad way and are genuinely wondering. But sometimes you can just tell it’s being asked from a place of morbid curiosity, which leaves me feeling like some circus sideshow, or just feeling like a horrible person.

So the moral of the story here is, think long and hard about whether you should be asking these questions, or at the very least think about the way you are presenting these questions.
Sometimes it’s better for everyone to just not know.

Diagnosis: "Fat"

This may be the hardest blog I’ve ever written. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about my weight or body image issues, because being open and honest about your insecurities tends to open you up to more ridicule and criticism, and that’s a dangerous thing to do, especially on the internet. However, I feel like maybe if I’m honest about what happened to me as a result of fat-shaming, it might save someone else from going through the same thing. And if I can help anybody out, it’ll be worth any criticism or ridicule. In my present condition I’m kind of past worrying about my own vanity anyway. There are much more important things to worry about.

I’ve been doing a lot of looking back recently. Most of the time I’m either trying to figure out when the cancer started, or I’m judging myself for not realizing I had cancer earlier, now that I can look back and spot all the symptoms. It’s not a healthy practice at all, but I have a lot of free time on my hands now that my official job title is “Cancer Fighter.” And what I’ve realized during the moments of reminiscing is…I spent so much time fat shaming myself, and letting one doctor do the same, that I put my own life at risk. 

You see, some of the major symptoms of my type of cancer (that I personally went through) are fatigue, unexplained weight loss, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, and night sweats. The defining trend with all of those symptoms is that they can also easily be attributed to being overweight, or at least a lot of them can. And when you’re overweight and start losing weight, even unintentionally, you tend not to question it, and your doctors tend to encourage it.

So that is where I was for several months. What turned out to be fatigue due to cancer was something that I was ashamed of because I thought I was just overweight and lazy. I needed to work out more, right? I obviously just needed to build up my stamina. 

The difficulty breathing was another issue all together. I had a pretty bad upper respiratory infection in September. I actually started seeing a pulmonologist at that time, because of that infection and because I tend to have chronic upper respiratory problems anyway. This particular infection left me with a residual cough that lasted several months afterwards, and that’s what lead me to discovering what I for months referred to as “the lump in my throat.” The pulmonologist ran all kinds of tests on me, including two different lung capacity tests, the second one about two months after the first. The second test showed my lungs working at only 50% capacity, down from about 80% at the first.

The doctor thought this was simply because of my weight. I accepted that explanation.

By the time I received my diagnosis, I had lost over 10% of my body weight. I had been battling crippling fatigue for months. I did have other symptoms that could not be explained away with a diagnosis of being fat (like the fact that I couldn’t even swallow fluids anymore), and that’s what finally lead me to seeking medical attention. 

One of the few good things about my diagnosis is how I now have a logical explanation for everything I’d been struggling with for so long. And the explanation has nothing to do with my size. I can now look back and recognize that even with being overweight, I was actually in pretty good health before the cancer started. If only I had believed that.

So I guess my point in writing all of this is to first of all work through my regret in not listening to my body. While I may never have come up with “cancer” being the reason for everything, I definitely could have recognized that there was something seriously wrong if I hadn’t been so busy being ashamed of myself. Secondly, to let anyone else going through anything similar to this know that they’re not alone. I have heard other stories like mine. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Fat doesn’t always equal unhealthy, and whatever size we find ourselves at, we know our bodies well enough to know when there’s an issue that has nothing to do with weight. Maybe we just need to learn to trust ourselves rather than sit in silence due to shame.

Regarding the Bad Days

Some days are worse than others. I’ve already written a blog about how I’m not strong. I meant every word of it. I’m not strong. I get through everything because I don’t have a choice. I have cancer whether I like it or not and I have to deal with it the best way I possibly can, moment by moment and day by day.

Some days…my best is worse than it is on other days. Wednesday was one of those days for me.

You see the thing is, I have so many diagnoses right now, and so many medications to try to control everything going on with me, that between the symptoms of the diagnoses and the side effects of the medications, not to mention just plain being pregnant, my body feels like it’s part of some kind of sadistic science experiment from hell. And I’m not saying that just to use gratuitous profanity, I honestly feel like hell is the only place that could possibly come up with the stuff I deal with at times.

And it’s hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with. Some days all my symptoms are worse than others. Wednesday was like that. Some days I am faced with debilitating, crippling fatigue. I’m talking like the kind of fatigue that starts in the center of your being and spreads throughout your entire body, even to the extremities of your fingertips, to where even simple tasks like keeping yourself fed and hydrated become more than you can handle.

Those days are the hardest. And that kind of fatigue is my most common symptom. It’s worse some days than others. Sometimes the steroids I’m on mask the fatigue and I’m more mentally alert even while my body is still tired. Those days are easier to handle because it’s easier to talk myself through it.

Other days…I just let it happen. I let the fatigue happen. I let the pity party happen. Sometimes it just has to so that you can move on. I’ll be honest, I spent a huge part of Wednesday just feeling sorry for myself. A lot of “Why me?” prayers were prayed. I had an emotional meltdown or two.

I’m not proud of it. However, I’m also not ashamed. It’s OK to have a moment of weakness every now and then, regardless of what you’re going through. You don’t have to have a cancer diagnosis during pregnancy (or just a cancer diagnosis in general) in order to earn the right to have a meltdown.

Life is freaking hard sometimes.

The trick is what you do once the meltdown is over, once that day is over, once that week is over, if that’s what it takes!

I took the day off. Then I dusted myself off and got started all over again. I got back into the fight. One bad day, one emotional meltdown, one horrible diagnosis doesn’t have to define how you handle the entire situation. The only way that happens is if you let it and quit fighting, and that can only happen if you forget what you’re fighting for. And there’s always so much to fight for!