What is it about this article that struck such a chord with so many people?
Brains fascinate us with their complexity and the mysteries they hold. Everything we dream, think, feel, and do—everything that makes us who we are—comes from the brain. We are our brains. It is terrifying when the mind breaks down due to illness or aging, and we lose what is dearest to all of us and to our loved ones: our personas. People are hungry to know more about the mind and the mental ailments that we all hope can one day be explained and cured.
In April 2016, an ordinary envelope arrives in the mail. When I open it, I’m astonished to find I have a remarkable, once-unimaginable new title for myself: cancer survivor. On May 6, 2016, the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is holding its annual melanoma survivorship luncheon, and I am among the guests invited by Dr. Atkins and his team.
Survivor. Am I a survivor? They must have made a mistake. I have not been cured. At best, I am in remission. True, I’m still alive sixteen months after my diagnosis, which is an incredible feat given the grim prognosis of my disease: four to seven months. But I’m still suffering from rashes all over my skin. And who knows how many cancer cells continue to lurk undetected in my body, waiting to sprout into tumors?
But there it is, in an official letter, an honor more precious—and unexpected—than any I can recall.
What does survivor mean? What does it take to be admitted into this special club?
In the days leading up to the event, I ask myself many times about my surprising new identity. I’m curious about what it really signifies. At its most basic, a survivor is someone who was seriously ill but isn’t dead, at least for now. Not a bad label, given the alternative, but somehow less than entirely satisfactory. Or maybe survivor includes everyone currently free of any detectable signs of the disease. For me, this definition seems too random, too dependent on the accuracy of our current diagnostic tools. Melanoma cells can lay dormant and hidden for years, biding their time and then emerging from the depths of the body when the conditions are right to strike and kill quickly. Survivor is a problematic category if it simply means that someone’s cancer cannot be detected with the tools available at the point in time when the hosts mailed out the luncheon invitations.
I Google the general definition of the word and learn that survivor means a person who remains alive, carries on despite hardships or trauma, perseveres, and remains functional or usable. This sounds a lot more inspiring, especially the last part, “functional and usable.”
Am I functional and usable? What about the others who attend? How incapacitated will they be? Are they still functional and usable?
I start obsessing over this idea and begin examining my own life, all that I have done and been, the good and the bad. I think about the people I love, especially the two people I brought into this world and nurtured, Kasia and Witek. Am I a successful human being? What have I achieved? Do I measure my life by my career success, the hundreds of scientific lectures I’ve given and articles I’ve had published? Or is my real achievement my devotion to my family, who in turn have stood by me through the wintry days of gloom and tragedy? I reflect on my cheerful, still so innocent grandsons, Sebastian and Lucian, who always wait on the front porch for their loving babcia to arrive from Washington, DC.
But I’ve also failed. I still carry guilt and regret for the breakup of my first marriage and for not being there to support my first husband through his unsuccessful battle with melanoma. And what about who I am now? Am I functional? Usable?
The day of the luncheon is dreary, rainy, and cold. I’m not sure I want to go there and mingle with people I don’t know, people who were—or maybe are—on the verge of dying. But I shake off my reluctance, and off we trek, Mirek, Witek, Cheyenne, and I.
More than seventy people crowd into a conference room at Georgetown University Hospital: Dr. Atkins and other doctors and nurses and about thirty melanoma patients along with their families and friends. I recognize many of these faces from my visits to the cancer center, although in most cases, at the time I had no idea that they also were suffering from melanoma. Today, everyone looks healthy, and we’re all smiling.
The survivors range in age from their late thirties to over eighty, with most in their sixties, I’m guessing. And almost all of them are eager to share their stories: symptoms, diagnosis, treatment. Like soldiers emerging alive from a battlefield with emotions still raw, they easily discuss their experiences with comrades who’ve undergone similar hardships, the only ones who really understand.
One woman tells us she was diagnosed fifteen years ago with early-stage melanoma. Unfortunately, in recent years the disease metastasized throughout her body including her spine. Immunotherapy saved her
