Cancer Goes to New Zealand | Mar 3 2025

February Blur

I’m writing on March 3. While February has disappeared with the turn of the calendar page, it’s still very much alive in my memory. I spent most of it in New Zealand, traveling both islands by boat, hiking path, and coach bus, with a small group of surprisingly compatible, very accomplished, very smart people. There’s no way to describe the variety of terrain, vistas, geological formations we experienced. There’s no way to describe the beauty, or to even begin to capture the impact such beauty can have on the soul. Still, early on, I picked up strands of a through-line that’s seen me home, even as it’s simultaneously ushered me to a new place. Of course, I’m talking about cancer. 

Flame 

On this trip, it seemed people with cancer experience were mysteriously drawn to one another. There were three cancer survivors including me. There were also two people facing potentially serious long-term health issues. Over a period of days, the stories rose quietly as people found each other.  

That need to connect is a survival instinct. Cancer survivors and their families feel it; people with other serious debilitating illnesses, physical and mental, or facing a truely dark night of the soul, do too. Let’s face it, darkness is darkness. Only the details are different. 

The cancers: one bladder cancer, one breast, and two lung cancers (me included.) The most straightforward: bladder cancer, considered cured with a miracle drug (it sounded a lot like immunotherapy, but those details seemed unimportant to the survivor’s wife.) 

The worst of the cancer stories: breast cancer, with surgeries, chemo, radiation, botched implants and removal, and now, grossly uncomfortable breast prostheses. Still 10 years cancer free is nothing to sneeze at. The worst, that is, unless you count death, which the other lung cancer person, a mother, experienced, leaving her daughter to tell me about it on a long ferry trip across the Cook Strait.

My version of lung cancer, the lucky version, had me out on tracks in the New Zealand bush (translation: hiking trails in the woods), walking up to 12 or 13 miles on the long days, with an average of 7 each day. “I’d never guess you have lung cancer,” marvelled the breast cancer survivor and then, one of the travelers with some serious physical issues. He walked with a cane some days– “It’s a cane day,” he’d say genially as we fell into our preferred spots at the back of the line of hikers. 

I knew only that his back had been damaged during his military career, some of which involved being a doctor with special forces. He knew I took a miracle drug that sometimes had some side effects; one day, I asked permission to get a general professional comment on dealing with one of the side effects and he graciously responded. 

Gratitude

At different times in the trip, he and I talked about living with our circumstances. We discovered we have similar approaches. Towards the last few days, we arrived at the subject of gratitude. He’d seemed to have no trouble expressing gratitude throughout the trip. He called himself “blessed,” which shook me a little. I knew he belonged to a conservative church, but he never brandished his beliefs. In fact, I felt remarkably in tune with him when we talked about matters of the spirit. But blessed? 

Over a final meal, our small dining room emptying of trip members who wanted to pack, I confessed I was going home with the intention of dwelling in gratitude, not just ticking it off a quick mental list and calling it done. He understood. He said he would pray for me, that we should pray for each other. Hoo boy, that shook me too. I caught myself wondering if I even consciously pray any more. 

That’s when I had a seemingly unrelated realization, which of course, turns out to be completely related. After the early days of the trip, getting up at ungodly (to me) hours to travel to a new location, I was shocked to discover I was still alive. As the days built into weeks, I was not just alive, I was astonished to see how long a day could be. Then, when I learned that one of our group had been following the age-old writer’s practice of rising before dawn to write, it was like being hit over the head. Newsflash: Oh. I could do that too. I could claim those hours for myself, before the rush of tasks and responsibilities took over. 

It’s only been a week, but I’ve gotten up early; I’ve found my notebook again. I wasn’t surprised to watch reflection on gratitude emerge in page after page. I’ve pressed myself. Why has it been impossible to dwell in gratitude for the life I’m able to live, even with stable Stage 4 cancer? I can say I’m lucky, I’m a miracle, I’m amazed, but grateful? The difference, my dear husband suggested, is that none of those has the element of thanks that the word gratitude embodies. 

Push a little and what comes up? I’m afraid (ha, no news there.) But hear me out on how I think I’ve got this wired: If I allow myself to feel truly grateful for this long stretch of stable days, I will stop being protected from recurrence. It’s as if by holding off gratitude, I am willing the cancer away. I’m reminded of a little kid with her fingers in her ears, taunting another kid with “Can’t hear you, can’t hear you” and turning away as if the kid didn’t exist. 

There’s more, I’m sure. But it’s getting late and I’m getting up early for a brain MRI. Because, cancer. Remember?

How I Spent My Diagnosiversary 

It’s been four years since my diagnosis. Here’s how I want to mark the beauty of living. 

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Thanks for reading. Here’s hoping you mark a beautiful moment in your day!