When the Healthiest Person You Know Gets Lung Cancer
January 31, 2024
Drawing of the lobes of the lung from my Bye Bye Lobey party. The right upper lobe where the tumor was located, aka “Lobey,” has the heart.
In late 2023, I joined the club no one wants to be a member of — I was diagnosed with lung cancer.
It’s not like I thought I was immune from cancer. So many friends have had breast cancer, my mother had ovarian and bladder cancers, and I’ve had Stage 0 melanoma. Even with regular checkups, if you’d told me I had one of those cancers I wouldn’t have been surprised. But I was never a smoker, so lung?? How was that even possible? I had no symptoms. We can guess how it happened, but the truth is I’ll never really know. I’m incredibly lucky because the tumor was discovered when we were looking for something much less ominous. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about it potentially for years, when it was much too late to be treated effectively.
As grateful as I was to have the diagnosis it was a gigantic blow to my ego. Whether realistic or not, I do consider myself the healthiest person I know at my age plus 10 years in either direction. Being “healthy” is my identity. I eat a good diet, exercise, and haven’t had a drop of alcohol in decades. I’ve been doing yoga for 34 years and danced for 10 years prior to that. I have a master’s degree in dance and have studied so many dance forms I can’t even list them all here. I taught yoga to undergraduates at a university and several community colleges across Los Angeles. Blah blah blah, I have all this cred as a “healthy” person. And although my parents passed in their 80s there’s a lot of family longevity. Whenever the financial planner asks how long I expect to live my answer is 100. They kind of snicker but that does not seem unreasonable to me. I’ve had two great aunts who lived to 100 and 104, one of my mom’s cousins lived to 98, and another just celebrated her 100th birthday (I unfortunately couldn’t attend the party because I was recovering from surgery). But getting a cancer diagnosis made it real: none of that matters, I am a mere mortal after all.
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First steps
Years ago a friend told me the worst part of getting a cancer diagnosis is you’re told you have cancer but then you have to wait because it takes a while to find out whether or not it’ll kill you. Thankfully, my waiting period was only two days before the pulmonologist said “I’ve had to give this news to five people today and your case is my favorite because your prognosis is so good. You’ll likely just need surgery and be celebrating with your friends afterwards.” Fantastic! Exactly what I wanted to hear.
I had to start sharing the news. I decided to only tell my closest friends and family, and to tell the story chronologically so they could experience it the way I had: during regular/annual bloodwork some of my levels were off, we started scanning various organs, and it turns out there was a tumor in my lung. My prognosis was excellent, I should be able to have surgery and be done with it. I did not lead with the words “I have lung cancer” because I knew if I did no one would hear anything after that. It worked pretty well, in fact so well that in a couple of cases family members asked “wait, are you telling me you have cancer?” I wanted this news to land lightly, to protect both the recipients and myself. The last thing I needed was the people closest to me freaking out.
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Here’s how I managed my journey and what I learned along the way.
People don’t know what to say or do — but I knew they wanted to help
If your friend or family member tells you they have a serious medical condition, the best thing you can do is just say “I’m so sorry this is happening to you. I’m here for you.” Getting that call can be a shock. I know because I’ve been on the receiving end way too many times. It can trigger all kinds of past experiences with your own health or the health of others close to you. But try to avoid turning it into being about you (sharing your own health problems), making generic statements like “there’s so much suffering in the world,” or making comparisons to other people who have had a similar disease (especially if your comparison is from 40 years ago — medicine has improved since then!).
Just say you’re sorry and you want to support, and offer whatever support you can realistically provide — a meal, a ride, someone to talk to, etc. Make the offer then say “if that’s not helpful just let me know what would be.” At first I didn’t know how to respond to these generous offers, until a friend who’s been through multiple health crises told me it’s okay to say “thank you, I’m not sure yet what I’ll need, when I figure it out I’ll let you know.” That helped me a lot because then I could go back later and say “Remember that wonderful meal you offered? It’d be really helpful if you could bring it by on Wednesday.”
“Getting a cancer diagnosis made it real: I am a mere mortal after all.”
I had to find a manageable way to communicate progress
From my experience as the loved one of someone going through cancer, I knew that updates along the way, especially right after surgery, would be crucial to help everyone feel involved and secure that I was getting the necessary care and recovering nicely. I needed to find a way to share updates that didn’t require too much time from me or my partner Daniel. I considered a Facebook group but half my friends despise Facebook so that wasn’t going to work. A couple of people suggested CaringBridge and that worked perfectly. I created a private site and invited people to join, they got email alerts when a new update was posted, and they could read and comment if they wanted to (or not). I posted updates at regular intervals, and when I was in the hospital Daniel posted them. I shared much more often than I expected to — my thoughts, photos, and videos. I found it cathartic to share and see the responses, and people said it felt great to be in community with others who were also supporting me. At some point I realized people wanted to see me in motion, so videos were a great way for them to see I was doing okay and reduce their anxiety about my recovery, and they were fun and easy for me to create. At two-weeks post-surgery (which happened to be two days before Christmas) I uploaded video of my victory lap, including the cough in mid-dance.
I made the process uniquely mine
When my loved ones have faced cancer, with a few exceptions, there’s mostly been a lot of drama. I was intent on not responding that way — it’s just not my style. I quickly realized I wanted to approach this process mindfully and with grace, and to do that my response would have to reflect the culmination of my 34 years of yoga and meditation practice, therapy, and deep exploration of yoga, Buddhist, and Christian contemplative traditions. To put it bluntly, this was a time to call in all the skills I had and ratchet up my performance.
First, I wanted to find a way to process emotions with awareness and not reactivity. My tendency in any urgent situation is to problem solve, so I naturally went into problem-solving mode while I was still shocked and trying to process what was happening. Close friends reminded me to not let the emotions go by unacknowledged, that it was okay to “be the whiny baby” for a few minutes. That reminder was really helpful because when the emotions came, I was able to experience them fully and move on. I stopped whatever I was doing and let the emotion happen, usually a wave of low-grade depression or tears, acknowledged what I felt, maybe made some notes in my journal, then gave myself a moment before continuing with my day.
Next, I knew I’d need resources — books, poems, songs, podcasts — to support me on my very unique journey. Movement is important to me so I decided I’d dance every day before the surgery since I wasn’t sure how long it’d be before I could dance again after it. Other than that, I found myself going back to two sources:
These lines from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours (1.59) were essential reminders.
Just keep going
No feeling is final
Don’t let yourself lose me
And Richard Miller’s pre-surgery guided meditation was perfectly targeted to my situation.
This is a time for deep healing, well-being, and restoration
The body has an innate healing intelligence, where the cells organize themselves for maximum healing
You’re being cared for by capable, competent, respectful hands
I keep a whiteboard in my yoga room with inspirational thoughts and images, so I wrote these lines on the board so I could see them throughout the day.
I acknowledged what was happening to my body
I talked to the tumor. “Okay little 30mm thing … who are you and how did you get in there? When everything else is so healthy?? You need to go away. And before you bring any friends.” Weird as it might sound, this made me feel like I was in control, the tumor was not going to have the final say here.
When a close friend had breast cancer in 2013, we had a Bye Bye Boobies party before her mastectomy. Twenty girlfriends wore pink costumes with bras on the outside, we played games, held a competition for the best outfit (my friend’s 80-year old mother won), ate breast-shaped cakes, and danced. It was a perfect acknowledgement and sendoff for the integral body parts that had served her well in her life up to that point. So I borrowed the idea and held a Bye Bye Lobey party for the lobe of my lung that was about to be removed. We drew pictures of lobes and wrote haiku to Lobey. The pictures are attached to a piece of foam core in my yoga room, and they’ll stay there until I feel ready to let them go.
I kept my sense of humor while the rest of my life continued
It was important to me that the rest of my life move forward as much as possible, as well as the lives of the people around me, and I needed to keep my sense of humor to be authentically me throughout it all.
My partner Daniel and I met with our couples coach to share my health update and talk through what this might mean for our relationship. In our normal life, any arguments Daniel and I have are usually about how we manage in the kitchen (cooking, cleaning, all of it) and we’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time discussing this with our coach. So when our coach said “well, at least you two are past arguing about the kitchen,” Daniel’s response was “oh, that’s actually what we need to talk about in the second half of this appointment.”
As part of surgery prep, I was told to wash my hair the night before and not use any leave-in hair products. That is not something any curly girl wants to hear. We live and die by hair products. I clearly remember the frizzy Dark Ages of the first half of my life without good hair products and that was the last image I wanted to have of myself before going under anesthesia. So when I was told to leave my hair to potentially frizz on its own, I posted it on CaringBridge as a funny / not funny seriously-is-this-the-thing-that’ll-take-me-over-the-edge joke. It became what one friend called the “humorous interlude” in the middle of the seriousness of the disease, followed by many posts about the state of my hair over the next few weeks.
Me, doing yoga in the hospital while still hooked up to the EKG. The surgeon told me it was okay to do whatever my body could, so …
And now
Cancer is behind me. At least for now. That is a bizarre statement because 3 months ago I didn’t even know I had it. It’s not been traumatizing. It’s been oddly manageable. I know that’s because I’ve had an amazing support system of family and friends and because of my excellent prognosis. Could I have a recurrence? Maybe. Am I ready for that? Probably not, but I’ll deal with that if it happens. All I can do is get regular checkups and maintain my overall good health.
What lesson does this experience hold for me? It clarifies the importance of maintaining gratitude and the importance of my relationships with loved ones.
At different times I’ve done meditations on gratitude or kept a gratitude journal, which is exactly what it sounds like, you write down and focus on things you’re grateful for. Even with a gratitude practice, this cancer still blindsided me and reminded me of my mortality. In an interview Laura Linney said “it’s a privilege to age” and I think of that often. There’s a Zen saying “practice like there’s a sword over your head.” In other words, every moment is precious. I’m grateful for the years of practice that enabled me to go through this with grace and thoughtfulness. I’m grateful I’ve had as many years as I have and am still inspired by my 100-year old role models.
It’s worth repeating that I’m profoundly grateful for my relationships with family, friends, and colleagues that have been cultivated over (in some cases) decades. This was a moment when I had to call in all the support I could get, and they showed up in exactly the way I needed — with the gift of their company, humor, food, and love.
The cancer has given me a new way to look at my health. I’m owning this experience — I’ve survived something. I literally have the scars. I’m not trying to fight aging, instead leaning more into this season of my life. This feels right.
This post also appears on Medium.