lessons learned (& learning)

Since entering remission, I have been asked to give talks at my company to various teams and audiences about my experience. It started off as a very daunting concept, but it’s become an almost therapeutic exercise, forcing me to talk through what I experienced. Most of all though, I get to use my experience as a spark to spread awareness and encourage the men in the audience (and the husbands, brothers, friends etc. of those in the audience) to be more proactive with their health.

Maybe I get a bit philosophical during these talks, but if time permits I always include a section to relay some of the big lessons I learned during my cancer journey. I’ve done my best to summarize those lessons herein:

1.      Sport Has the Power to Change Lives

I work for a sports company and the power of sport is part of the corporate mission statement, so this lesson is definitely a bit of a case of “drinking the corporate Kool-Aid”. But I do truly believe the statement holds. Sports has been an enormous part of my life and is core to my identity. And sports also played a critical role in my journey – from discovery, to fighting it, to recovering afterwards. If you read earlier posts, you know that I found the lump after a sports injury at the gym, and that running/hiking were a critical part of maintaining a positive mental health state during the throes of chemo. And in one of my latest posts about life in the weeks and months after chemo, I wrote about how I had circled a game on the calendar just 2 weeks after finishing treatment as a stretch goal for getting back on the ice with my team: a goal to help drive that return to normalcy and to test my body and mind. Cancer changed my life no doubt, but sports helped me navigate that change.

2.      Living Day by Day

Before cancer, this was a bit of a foreign concept to me. While I love being spontaneous, I’m also a big planner. A great example of this is the hyper detailed spreadsheet I created for our sabbatical, showing the day by day itinerary of the transport, accommodation, and meals/activities I had researched and booked for us. Whenever we go on a group holiday, I am normally the one doing the planning and booking. But of course, after the diagnosis and especially during chemotherapy – all plans were scuppered, and making new ones was often in vein. We didn’t know what each test result or what each treatment would mean, how I would feel physically (or mentally) on any given day, and now long-term we also don’t know what side effects might pop up or persist – or if there will be a recurrence. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” as the old saying goes. Well, we adapted as best as we could, and learned to take things day by day, trying not to simulate every permutation and combination of scenarios or make plans that we knew we couldn’t cancel easily. For example – we no longer buy the cheapest option with no flexibility when we book a flight – we set expectations accordingly that things may not work out, and make sure we don’t get punished financially as a result (especially as trip cancellation insurance doesn’t hold for a pre-existing condition now!). There’s also of course some beauty in living this way. We experienced this first hand, by having a strategy to make use of weekends during chemo where I felt well enough, each time booking a last minute trip somewhere within driving distance for a change of scenery. Despite the circumstances, we had some really beautiful last minute trips to places we wouldn’t have otherwise visited.

3.      Mental Health

I covered this one extensively in my dedicated post about coping mechanisms and mental health so I won’t repeat myself. Suffice to say, I never fully appreciated the importance of mental health. A traumatic experience like this will test mental health resilience, but there are so many avenues available to help mitigate and even strengthen mental health in the face of adversity.

4.      Openness / Vulnerability

Almost from Day 1, I tried to be pretty open with my friends, family, and colleagues about what was going on. No, I didn’t shout it from the rooftops that I had cancer, but I do think it helped a lot to be able to bring my immediate circle in on the news, and I know they appreciated it too. The amazing knock-on of this was that it also resulted in an incredibly strong support structure assembling around me, ready to help with rides, meals, gifts to cheer us up, and check-ins. Feeling that love really helped buoy my spirits throughout. Since being in remission, being open and vulnerable in talking about what I went through has also been really rewarding. It helps remove the stigma around the topic, and also just generally gives people encouragement to talk about whatever challenges they’re facing. We’re all going through something that might not be readily apparent, and we all deserve support and grace.

5.      Meaning / Purpose

Again, I’m at risk of being repetitive from my mental health post, but I think it’s worth re-emphasizing how beneficial maintaining a sense of purpose is, even when it feels like you have lost all control of circumstances. The example I used in that post was continuing to cook dinner every night, no matter how bad I felt, because cooking gave me a sense of purpose and an hour or two of clarity. This blog also embodies my drive to try to create meaning from every circumstance – I’m really trying to generate something positive from a seemingly random and unlucky curveball that life threw at me.

Those are the main lessons I tend to emphasize during my public speaking engagements – and again apologies if it got a bit too preachy. Just one last takeaway before I end this post – extreme gratitude for healthcare workers. Most of them are underappreciated and almost all of them are underpaid, but wow – I will never again take for granted what amazing work they do. My sister is a respiratory therapist back in Canada, and I am even more proud of her today. Please, don’t forget to give the kudos to healthcare professionals who pour their hearts into looking after you, whether for something big or small.