Cancer is one hell of a teacher

5 Lessons cancer taught me as I celebrate 27 bonus years

Regina 27

Cancer 0

That’s my Super Bowl of Life score.

On February 19, I celebrate my 27^th cancerversary. I have now lived 27 bonus years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Back on Feb. 19, 1998, surgeon Leonard Brzozowski stood at my gurney at University Hospitals after performing the lumpectomy and told me, “It’s cancer.” The game of Life flipped in the air and all my hopes and dreams and plans and every sense of normal went flying.

The tumor was the size of a grape. Oncologist Jim Sabiers said it was a fast-growing Stage 2 cancer with at least one lymph node involved. The options for treatment included surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Which would I need? “All of the above,” he said.

I had been married only one year. My daughter Gabrielle, who was 19, was a sophomore at Ohio University. For 18 years, it had been just the two of us. How would she handle this?

With grace and strength I didn’t know she had.

Back then, I didn’t know if I would live. My dad’s three sisters died from breast cancer. Two of them were in their 40s. I was 41, so I filled a hope chest for invisible grandchildren I hoped to live long enough to see.

Those three grandchildren, my sacred three, River, Ainsley and Asher are now 11, 13, and 15.

And now I can’t see as I type because I’m crying. Happy tears.

I cried a lot during cancer. Buckets. I cried telling my daughter over the phone to stay at college and finish. I cried when her girlfriends drove 4 hours to bring her home from Ohio University that night to visit. I cried when she came with me to chemo.

That first chemo, I was so scared. Nurse Pam Boone wore gloves so the drugs going into my veins wouldn’t burn her fingers. Adriamycin. Cytoxan and 5FU. (I think all chemo drugs should be named FU.) I endured more side effects than you want to know about. I constantly reminded myself of the biggest effect of chemo that mattered more than all those side effects: Life. I got to live.

Six weeks of daily radiation left me exhausted, but I rode my bike to and from treatments at University Hospitals every single day. The road back home was uphill through Little Italy on a street that felt like a 45 degree incline. My daughter called me “radioactive.”

I can’t quite call cancer a gift, but I will call it one of my greatest teachers. Still is.

It taught me that every day is a gift, one I get to open and cherish every day, no matter what unfolds that day.

Cancer showed me how tough I really am. My friend Ro Eugene, who cancer claimed, used to tell me, “It’s hard, but you can do hard.” She was right. My friend Margo added this, “You can do hard, but it’s still hard!”

Cancer taught me five lessons that transformed my life, lessons that are helping me get through this latest life detour of my 28-year marriage ending:

1. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.

Everything is do-able if you break it into small parts.

If you can’t handle a day of it, you handle an hour of it or 15 minutes of it, and then another 15, and then another. I can handle this (insert problem or person’s name) for one day. Or for one hour. I constantly tell myself, Regina, you just need to get through the next hour. And I always do.

The secret? Go to bed early if you have to!

2. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, show up and never give up.

Some days all I could do was move from one couch to the chair before I landed in the bathroom sick to my stomach from the chemo.

Move a muscle, change a thought, my friend Maura told me. Some days that’s all the action you can take, but it’s still action. Dress up just for you, no one else. You might look or feel disheveled, but you are still among the living. Remind yourself of that and high-five yourself in the mirror.

3. Dare mighty things.

When my hair started falling out. I bought an expensive wig, but a salon over-permed it and ruined it, so I had nothing to turn to when my hair fell out.

There was no Gathering Place back then. There were no free wigs. So I went boldly bald, but some days I felt like a patient, not a person.

Then Eileen Saffran dared something mighty. She created a place where people touched by cancer could get free services for non-medical needs to boost their body, mind and spirit, like support groups, yoga, massage, exercise and nutrition classes. It would run completely on donations.

She dared so big, there are now two locations.

Years after my diagnosis, I was giving a speech at Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana and discovered they had a free wig salon. I took a zillion pictures of it, told Eileen, “We’ve got to start one here,” and handed her a check to get one going. (That’s it above.)

We dared so big, we’re up to three Regina Brett Wig Salons! There’s one at The Gathering Place on the east side, one on the west side and one at MetroHealth hospital.

4. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save anything for a special occasion. Today is special enough.

It is special, just as it is.

So if you invite me over for dinner, don’t be shocked if I use your fancy rose scented soap, dry my hands on those lovely embroidered towels and ask you to light that lovely apple cinnamon candle that’s collecting dust.

Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. Use the good stuff. Now.

5. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

I got to live another 27 years, but so many people I love, and many more that you love, didn’t get to survive as long as we wanted them to. We’ve all lost people we love to cancer.

I outlived my three aunts who died of cancer at 42, 44 and 58. They never got to reach my age. I “get to” be 68.

So celebrate getting older. I let my hair turn gray. I rarely wear make up. I turn 69 in May. I “get to” grow old. I don’t waste a moment complaining about my wrinkles or saggy skin or all those brown spots on my hands. Those aren’t age spots. Those are sun spots. I’ve been kissed by a star! They are constellations, life’s way of reminding me that we’re all stardust.

We are here for such a brief, shining moment. Don’t waste a second of it.

Shine while you still have the chance.