That night I went home and stood unclothed in front of my full length mirror, trying to imagine where the cancer was inside me. I touched the left side of my neck, where the malignancy had started, thinking, "Goddamn traitorous lymph cells." I ran my hands across my chest; below my fingers there was cancer there, too. Looking at myself, knowing there was disease in my young body, spreading even right that very moment from my neck to my sternum and into my upper stomach; it made me so angry, so dizzy with rage, I wanted to smash the mirror in front of me, as if destroying the image would take away the sickness from inside me. But cancer isn't cured by broken glass.

The doctors told me I was lucky to have Hodgkin's Disease. They call it the "Common Cold Cancer" because so many people (particularly women of my age group) are diagnosed with it each year. "If you're going to get cancer," the doctor joked, "this is the kind to get!" Being blessed with one of the most curable kinds of cancer was not then (and is not now) my idea of good fortune. So I wasn't going to die, but who really believes in their own fallibility at 20? Who has a clear understanding of their own mortality before they can even go bar-hopping? Certainly not myself. I had plans to keep my body young and healthy well into my 80's; not contract a serious disease before I could even get a discount on my car insurance. However, denial of a curable cancer is the fastest way to make it much, much worse so I had no choice but to accept the reality of my situation very quickly.

After the denial and the rage faded a bit, heavy depression and self pity were quick to follow. I spent many sleepless nights holding my teddy bear and asking "Why me? What have I done to deserve this?" But there were never any answers. Cancer rarely knows its victims. This is especially true of Hodgkin's Disease as it isn't necessarily hereditary, nor is it environmental. Some people just get it and there is no way to know for sure how or why. I kept telling myself it was just one of those shitty things that happens sometimes, for no good reason at all, but no rationalization made the diagnosis any easier.

I think the worst thing about having cancer is the frustration and overwhelming ennui. The utter helplessness of cancer patients is indescribable. You can go to treatment, you can rest, you can pray every night that the cancer will just go away and leave you alone, but aside from this, there is little to do but wait. Personally, I hate nothing more than boredom and inactivity. For example, I took a job last year that involved about 30 hours of work every week. This was in addition to my full course load and other extracurricular activities. Obviously, the income was nice, but the real reason I have kept the job (despite long hours and often little appreciation), is because I feel better when I'm busy. I enjoy a lot of responsibility, and have found many times that the more I need to do, the more I am able to accomplish. I am most satisfied when I have invested my time wisely and have achieved what I set out to do, whether that be completing all the reading for my classes or helping a friend through a rough period. It has always been an important priority to me that I keep busy.

How can I describe the extreme frustration at watching my friends go off to their jobs while I could only stay home and watch the Soaps? How can I explain how it feels to know that there are ugly malignant cells inside your body, eating away the good parts of you, while you sit on the couch playing Solitaire? And how can I express what it's like to feel your body getting weaker and sicker with the close of each passing day? I simply cannot.

Of course, I got treatment. But radiation therapy is hardly anyone's idea of an exciting way to spend the summer. It makes you sick, for one thing: nausea and vomiting are big side effects, especially when they irradiate your stomach. If you have very fair skin, as I do, it burns you. Something like a sunburn, only you're not allowed to use SunBlock. Wherever the radiation hits you, your hair falls out; I lost all of mine for about six inches up the back of my head. There is only a small chance that it will ever grow back.

The biggest side-effect, however, is the fatigue. It wears you out. That's the real reason why working is so difficult and discouraged: you're exhausted, just about all the time. And for me, that is where the terrible, maddening frustration would hit: to be out with a group of friends and realize an hour into the party that you're just too tired to talk anymore; to know that there are things you want desperately to do, but you lack the strength to get out of bed; this is what nearly drove me mad during this crazy and difficult summer.

Various friends and relatives would tell me what a wonderful opportunity this was for me. "Well, Ami, you've always wanted to be a writer, now you've got something to write about." And I would smile and nod (like I haven't heard that line about a hundred times) but inside my head I would be thinking, "I don't want this opportunity, thank you very much. I have plenty of things to write about, without needing a life altering illness. I don't want to be sick. I never wanted to be sick."

At first, IĘswore to never write about my cancer at all: too cliched, too sob story, too much like something you would see on an ABC After School Special. And besides, writing about my cancer would give it life. Putting the words on paper made it real, and the last thing I wanted was a tangible disease. But cancer is real. It's very, very real for millions of people, most of whom aren't lucky enough to have the "Common Cold Cancer" like I do.

My doctor told me that after four years or so, I can stop my quarterly visits to the Oncology Department at the hospital. After that time, however, I should make a habit of stopping in at least once a year. If I don't relapse within the first four years, he said, I probably won't at all, but there is no way to ever know for sure. Therefore, I should start yearly mammograms about the time I turn 30, just to be safe. In addition, I should also be on the lookout for early symptoms of leukemia, another relatively common side-effect from radiation therapy. (Leukemia is another form of cancer, different from Hodgkin's Disease, but occasionally related.)

So when does my career as a cancer patient end? When am I going to be out of the danger zone, in terms of possible relapse or potential other forms of cancer? When do IĘget my care-free, cancer-free life back? The reality of cancer, however, is that I don't. But at least I get a life.

© Trincoll Journal, 1995.