Letters From Cancerland: “I Can Swim”
I was recently in an interview (part of the team of interviewers, not the interviewee) and I heard the best answer ever to a difficult question. It was delivered without the candidate missing a beat.
I described the situation into which the candidate, if chosen, would be placed. It is an external program, there have been issues outside of our control that have created barriers and obstacles for predecessors in the position, and while there would be strong internal support, the employee often would be working on his or her own. I paused and then said, “So basically we would be dropping you into the ocean. How do you feel about that?”
The candidate didn’t even blink.
“I can swim.”
I carried that answer home with me and shared it with my husband, Warren. “Best answer I have ever heard,” I said. “I can swim. What a great response!”
And it is a great response. Dropped into the ocean? I can swim.
I’m carrying that response around in my head all the time now.
I am four months away from hitting the fifteenth anniversary of my diagnosis for multiple myeloma. Fifteen years. Heck, I was hoping for five. As I have recently written, my myeloma is in a holding pattern, neither retreating nor advancing. So the good news is it is not advancing. My lab results continue to be flat-line and reassuringly monotonous. The bad news is I haven't achieved a complete response to treatment, and I'm nowhere near to doing so. That, along with the passage of time and the burden of treatment (both past and present), takes a toll. On my energy, on my overall health, on my work, on my activities, on traveling, on just about everything.
I can swim.
After the 4th of July concert, when I was helping (very lightly) strike the stage (I know, I know: I did not move chairs or stands!), a longtime colleague came up to me to talk about this and that, including my health. His wife had successful cancer treatment (I don’t know what type) five years ago. At five years out, she continues to be cancer-free. He told me her oncologist said that if she passed the three-year mark, her chance of not having a recurrence was 80 percent. He then looked at me and said, “The great news is no cancer. But the treatment aged her by at least a decade. We’ll take that, but we now deal with her being 80 and having a body that is 90 and all the issues one has at 90.”
I had never thought of it that way, but I understood him immediately. I am 63 years old. My body and its responses? Easily ten years older, especially when I compare myself to my classmates and other friends in the 63 to 65 years old range. And that’s with eating (fairly) healthily, getting regular sleep and exercise (most of the time), and taking good care of myself.
I can swim.
The irony of my latching onto that phrase is that I can no longer swim. I had to give that up years ago when swimming became too difficult physically for me. Oh, I splash around from time to time, but swimming laps? Not doable. But when I look at everything I still do, from work to community involvement to my personal life, I know better.
I can swim.
In the juvenile court world, we talk a lot about resilience. Many of the youth (and not infrequently their families as well) have experienced considerable trauma (physical, sexual, and emotional, to name a few) in their lives. The ones who do the best, in a court setting and in the world, are ones who somehow have taken that trauma and built on it, or climbed up out of it, with successes against the odds. This is a phenomenon being studied by behavior specialists around the world, and the word that keeps coming up is “resilience.”
To put it another way, those kids can swim.
So as I walk along this crazy path, the one not of my own choosing, the one winding ever higher up into the mountains, I think of those kids. I think of that candidate. They can swim.
And so can I.
April Nelson is a multiple myeloma patient and columnist at The Myeloma Beacon. You can view a list of her previously published columns here.
If you are interested in writing a regular column for The Myeloma Beacon, please contact the Beacon team at .
Hi April - Something you said struck a chord with me. I was diagnosed almost 8 years ago in mid November (ironically my mother's birthday). You said that you were hoping for 5 years when you were diagnosed and have prevailed for 15. When I was diagnosed, I didn't know if I would see that Thanksgiving or Christmas. It was the first time I did not prepare the Thanksgiving dinner. However, looking back, I think of all of the wonderful things I have seen in those 8 years: my son's marriage and his son (my first grandchild); helping my daughter through a terrible divorce and seeing her remarried to a wonderful man and another grandson from them. So many other things and being able to start an exercise/pool program this year. Although I hate living from blood test results to the next blood test results, I feel blessed. Often I'm not sure if negative things are a result of the multiple myeloma or just aging (I'm soon to be 73). I enjoy your column. Please keep it up.
Dear April,
I enjoyed reading your article. I ‘get’ what you mean, and I’m also working on my swimming! It’s tough the way in which the treatment and the disease take their toll on your body, but I hadn’t thought of that as aging. I guess that is more or less what it really is. I was at a birthday party recently, and I found I could identify with the grandfathers who are 20 years plus older than me. However, I try my best to skip about like the 3 year olds when I can!
Thanks for writing, thanks for making me think about things in a different way. I hope things stay on the flat line for you and you keep on swimming.
Great article!
Hi April, I love that phrase, “I can swim!” It’s so positive and confident! I hear what you are saying about your health and the toll this disease has taken on you. I, too, feel as though it has aged me. I’ve always been compared to the Energizer bunny. Power walking has been my signature trademark, but three years into my multiple myeloma dance, I know I have slowed down considerably. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I can still get my long walks in even though they aren’t as speedy as they once were. ‘I can still swim!’ That phrase is going to become my mantra. Thank you for sharing it!
Patty
Dear April,
We love this article! It is so insightful and hopeful. It will percolate up to the top of the list of articles worthy of frequent re-reads. It looks like my husband (with high-risk smoldering myeloma) will likely start treatment next Monday. We are hanging on to every thread of positivity.
Great stuff, April.
Beautiful, helpful column, April. Thanks!
April, I love your columns, and meant to write before, but time just gets the best of me. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. So much of what you wrote touches on my own life and experiences as well. A couple of years after my stem cell transplant, I asked my oncologist why I was just not getting back my prior level of energy and strength. He looked at me with compassion and just said, "Your body has been hammered. You have been prematurely aged by the treatments and the cancer." That was not the answer I expected – I had thought it was something I could take a pill for to try and help me get back to where I was before, but I know now that I will never get back to where I was before. It just means that I need to spend my time looking for the best in each day, and do my best to "swim".
You also describe something fascinating to me. Since my transplant, I have been what my doctor calls "abnormally stable". I am NOT in remission (never got to very good response, but close!). My M-spike is slowly rising but in a stepwise, very slow progression as are my light chains, which now just crossed into the red zone (although not a very large increase; I've just been sitting on the line for a while). My platelets, curse them, barely rise above 60, etc. Yet, no one who has looked at my data can explain why this is happening. Most people seem to get treatment, achieve remission, at least for a while, then the multiplemyeloma comes back, often with a vengeance. Others, when they relapse, seem to do so fairly quickly. I am not downplaying the great blessing this is, but your column sounds like I am certainly not the only one with this pattern. I am not currently on any treatment, and have not been for five years, but I do Zometa treatments every three months and have regular blood checks, etc. Everyone says: don't change *anything* you are doing, in terms of diet, medications, etc.
Hi, April!
Many thanks for the very inspirational column you wrote. I will remember those words: "I can swim." for a long time. Thank you so much for this.
Thank you April! So, so true. If we want to have a happy, or at least contented, life we must start swimming. Life is so precious. We’ve gotta find a way to damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead!
Dear April,
I love the interview question, 'Basically we would be dropping you into the ocean ...' I know that I probably take your excellent writing too literally, but I have noticed in swimming pools in recent years that actually not everyone is doing laps, and, even if they are, some are using flotation devices! Aqua size is popular, in which 'swimmers' are using all sorts of floating objects such as waistbands, 'weights,' 'noodles.' So just about everyone can get into the water at some level of proficiency and enjoy some refreshing exercise, which has the advantage of not putting a lot of stress and strain on the system. Your column made me think of how nice it is to get into the water, even if not swimming in the classical sense! Thanks!
Hi April, I so appreciate the swimming analogy. The ability to stay afloat and ride the waves is an important key to managing multiple myeloma. Even though I rarely go swimming these days, I did swim quite a bit in the early days of my recovery and found that to be quite healing. It appears that we were diagnosed around the same time - 15 years ago. I was 51 at the time and had those sobering thoughts of "well, if I can make it to 60, that might be a good outcome." And I did feel quite elderly while going through the worst of my treatments. I never had a doctor tell me so bluntly that the entire process would age me by 10 years, but I instinctively felt it. I have been quite fortunate that the myeloma has not returned. At 67 now, I could not have imagined the life I have now back then. There is clearly a mystery to how all of this works. Thank you for sharing your story.
I can swim too!
April, thank you for this column! I have found my new mantra!
Best wishes,
Tabitha
I have been reading these heartwarming comments for the last 2 weeks and I feel a lot like Sally Fields when she won the Oscar for Places in the Heart: "You like me! Right now! You like me!" The summer has been challenging on many fronts, but I can swim! And your warm thoughts and observations have just added to my buoyancy.
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