A SURVIVOR'S STORY

by Carol French Johnson​

My phone was ringing as I walked into the Cedar Falls Library office on Tuesday, April 19, after a lunch meeting. The surgeon had performed a biopsy on Friday and told me I would hear from him on Monday. Monday, always a busy day, came and went and the call didn’t come. One small optimistic voice in my head said that I hadn’t heard because the results were negative. But the Tuesday call was NOT good news. The small breast lesion was indeed a cancerous tumor. He would biopsy the second tumor on Thursday and if also malignant, then I would need a mastectomy.

The surgeon told me all of this and more as I sat in his office that dismal Tuesday afternoon. I felt totally lost. Charles, my husband, was teaching a class and couldn’t be with me as I tried to put my mind around the fact that everything in my life had suddenly and inexorably changed. I was just plain numb and unbelieving. It turned out that the second tumor was also malignant. Surgery was scheduled and my breast was removed.

Somehow I went from a middle-age woman in the prime of her life to a cancer patient with whom physicians talked about “survival” statistics and whose body was irrevocably damaged. Instead of planning a new library service for the community, I was focused on decisions involving chemotherapy and radiation. Always a reader my entire life, I was suddenly incapable and unwilling to read anything about breast cancer. Because the librarian profession is 80% female, I immediately began hearing from friends and colleagues across the nation, many of whom are breast cancer survivors. They sent me articles, websites and their own stories. Initially, I could barely look at any of the material and this was so unlike me. I am a library administrator, a take-charge person and yet I simply didn’t want to take control at all. I wanted to cry and feel sorry for myself. I was completely despondent and I remember telling my sister that I would never be happy again.

Of course I was wrong. Humans are invariably adjustable. Sometime during those early hazy days after surgery I remember thinking that I had heard humans don’t tolerate extreme emotional issues for more than two weeks before they begin to “adjust”. And around two weeks out of surgery I was beginning to move away from the utter despair I had been feeling. I became impatient with my attitude and was simply tired of feeling sorry for myself.

Slowly I began welcoming family, friends and colleagues who expected and needed to share my pain. And I learned so much about the generosity and support of others. While I was focused on what had been lost, and what might happen in the future, family and friends were rejoicing in where I was right then – alive and basically healthy. I understand that many people call me a cancer survivor but I see myself as a “life” survivor.

All of us experience heartbreaks, fearful moments and times of despair. Life on this planet brings trials to even the most charmed lives. We are all, in one way or another, survivors of our life’s experiences. Of the inspirational books I have been given, my favorite is Caren Goldman’s, Healing Words for the Mind, Body and Spirit. Under the word “grief” is a Latin proverb that should have significance for all of us: “There is no grief which time does not lessen.”

This is a great reminder that the human spirit is indomitable. 

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