I Was Facing Terrifying News From My Doctor. Then My Friend Texted 2 Words That Made Me Rethink Everything.
“Love you forever,” I said as I tucked my 5-year-old daughter into bed.
“Even after you die?” she said, her blue eyes wide.
The question nearly knocked the wind out of me.
“Yes,” I stammered. “Always.”
Unbeknownst to my daughter, I was waiting to find out if I had breast cancer. At 45, I was one of millions of women recently advised to begin screening at a younger age due to skyrocketing diagnoses in women under 50 — especially since I have dense breast tissue and a family history of the disease, both of which increase my risk.
“Stay positive!” Those are the two words a lifelong friend had texted me when I shared that something suspicious had appeared on my breast MRI and required a biopsy. While in theory I agreed there was no reason to worry when it could be nothing, not worrying was another matter. I knew increased screening leads to earlier detection and more false positives, and yet the high likelihood of a false positive didn’t change the fact that I was terrified. And the more afraid I felt, the more I tried to replace my fear with optimism.
As the daughter of a psychologist and as an author who writes about mental health, I was familiar with the research that shows optimism can improve our health, longevity and happiness. I also knew the importance of acknowledging feelings like grief and fear. The trick is knowing when to use which approach, and embracing darkness and discomfort is an easy one to ignore in a society that prizes smiling faces, smiley face emojis and conversations riddled with superlatives like “awesome!” and “amazing!”
I had acted nonchalant when a breast care coordinator called and introduced herself as Hope. The ironically named Hope explained that because of the type of irregularity on the scan, I would need a special biopsy that takes place during an MRI. I scheduled an appointment for the following week and tried not to think about it as I drove to my daughter’s kindergarten holiday party.
My breath caught in my chest as I parked, but I told myself it was pointless to freak out when this was probably not cancer, and even if it was, we would catch it early. Yet, as I watched my daughter decorating cookies, the possibility of having a disease with the potential to take me from my children took my breath away. It’s probably nothing, I thought as I opened a jar of red frosting for my daughter. But what if it’s something?
Until I became a mother, death was low on my list of fears, somewhere below speaking to a crowd and being rendered starstruck in the unexpected presence of Jude Law. I skied out of bounds, rented an apartment alone in a foreign capital with one of the highest murder rates in the world, and interviewed human smugglers on train tracks in rural Mexico. Once my son was born, though, I was terrified to board an airplane going anywhere. Every time I left for an out-of-town speaking event, I spent the flight praying I wouldn’t plunge from the sky.
The fear had faded over the years, but the “suspicious” MRI brought it back like a tsunami. Stay positive, I told myself. My brain had other ideas. I remembered the young woman I once wrote about named Nicole, who died of breast cancer when her daughter was 3. Recalling the black patent leather shoes Nicole’s toddler wore to her funeral, I swallowed back tears as I hugged my daughter goodbye and walked to my car.
Stay positive! The rallying cry reverberated in my head as I attended my office holiday party. But what if this is my last holiday season? The shouting match in my head and the tightness in my chest drowned out any conversation I attempted at the cheese table, so I ran into a cubicle and called Hope the breast care coordinator to see if I could get the biopsy sooner. A week suddenly seemed like a year. Hope didn’t answer, so I called again. And again. All the way through that cheery office party, I stole away to stalk Hope like a jilted lover.
That night, as I lay in bed next to my slumbering husband, I realized the Stay Positive! battle flag was useless against the fear tsunami. Besides, it was making me nuts. I had nearly chopped off my index finger while making salad for dinner and didn’t hear a word my kids said at the table because of the argument in my head.
I stared out the window at the stars shining in the inky black night and thought about swimming in the ocean. As a child from the landlocked Southwest, I tried to outrun the waves or stand firm against them as they crashed onto the beach. This got me tossed like a rag doll in the churning whirlpool until it slammed me onto the wet sand. I learned to dive headfirst into the waves instead. That’s what I had to do now, I realized.
I crept into the bathroom and wept. I allowed myself to imagine what it might be like if I did have cancer and had to do treatment while working and parenting, as so many women do. I thought about Nicole. I thought about my friend Catherine, who had lost her mother to ovarian cancer and then survived breast cancer herself while pregnant in her 30s.
Despite crying myself to sleep, I awoke refreshed. Through my window was the pinkest sunrise I had ever seen. That afternoon, I delighted in watching my husband and son fly a drone outside, the soft whirring sound of its liftoff blending into the birdsong. I felt such joy when my daughter hugged me that I thought I, too, might float into the air.
Why could I more fully inhabit these moments after bathing myself in tears on the bathroom floor? Maybe it was because the adage “what you resist persists” is true. Maybe it was because fear was love. I wouldn’t have one without the other, and in suppressing my fear I was also suppressing my love. Allowing myself to feel both brought me a heightened sense of being alive and a wave of gratitude for all I had.
The next time I glanced at my calendar and saw the biopsy appointment, I resisted the urge to scold myself for the jolt it sent through my system or tell myself to calm down. Instead, I cried in the darkened steam room at the gym. I recalled the Buddhist saying I had read aloud at Nicole’s funeral: “If death is certain but the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?” My fear of death helped me realize that, for me, the most important thing was to be here for all of life, the entire roller coaster. To drink in the magnificence and carefully tend to the suffering. The geese in formation. My husband’s grin. Holding my kids when they cried, and turning toward my own pain and fear with compassion.
When the day of the biopsy arrived, my husband drove me to the clinic and the procedure seemed like a dream since I had requested Xanax. After sleeping for several hours, I took my daughter to the flower section at the grocery store and watched her sprint from one bouquet to the next, enraptured as she smelled each blossom. “They’re so beautiful,” she said, clutching a purple orchid. “But they’re also sad because they wilt and then they’re gone.”
Hope the breast care coordinator called the day before Christmas. The anomaly on the MRI was something with a complicated name that amounted to “normal breast changes.” I wasn’t dying, after all. I would need another MRI in six months, and then I would resume my alternating biannual screenings. I was relieved, but also keenly aware that I would face the prospect of another cancer scare every six months for the rest of my life.
Instead of pretending that wasn’t scary, I resolved to notice my fear as part of my love and let it be. Because it was sitting in the cave of my dread, not replacing it with false cheer, that brought me clarity and presence. Just as fear is part of love, mortality is part of life, and that impermanence imbues the present moment with magical potency.
Six months after the biopsy, I walked into my next MRI and took a deep breath — because warding off death and striving to make peace with it, too, seemed like two of the most important things.
Megan Feldman Bettencourt is the author of “Triumph of the Heart: Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World” (Penguin), which explores forgiveness through science, stories and memoir. She has reported as a journalist from nine states and six countries and her writing has appeared in publications including Psychology Today, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Business Insider, Harper’s BAZAAR, and 5280: The Denver Magazine. As a keynote speaker and TEDx Boulder alum, Megan shares how forgiveness can enhance individual and collective well-being. Through her company ClearLine Consulting, she offers media relations support; public speaking and presentation training; employee engagement programs and one-on-one coaching. Visit her at meganfeldman.com.
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