Survivor Reflects: The Best I Could Offer

In the last 30 years, I’ve been diagnosed with malignancies four times—twice with Hodgkin’s Disease and twice with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Cancer Yahtzee! My friends actually have an “over-under” betting pool on my life expectancy—just as they would for a football game. They think I don’t know. Does it bother me? No way! I think it’s hysterical—and, believe me, I couldn’t ask for better friends than I have.

Understand that I take this business seriously, but I also believe anything taken too seriously owns a piece of you. Cancer is the last thing you want to have equity in your soul.

My experience has earned me an advanced degree, beyond post-doctoral, in surviving cancer treatment. I’ve had the lifetime limit of radiation treatment and had chemotherapy ad nauseam, sometimes being injected with syringes so big that I half-expected to see tropical fish swimming in them! Then, in 2003, having run out of options, I had an allogeneic stem cell transplant. My chart at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia is in a file cabinet—its own.

Just recently, a friend asked what advice I could give her sister who had been battling cancer and was about to undergo a similar transplant. I guess I should have had a ready answer, but I didn’t. Maybe it was because shortly after my transplant, I was slammed with an acute case of Graft-Versus-Host-Disease that got very ugly, very fast. Or possibly I didn’t want to let on how the GVHD had brought me to my knees, both physically and emotionally—and held me there for almost two years. Or why, in spite of having a beautiful, loving wife and two very special daughters, more than once during that period, I had thought about playing in traffic.

No, I felt that a person considering a transplant of this kind would benefit from something a little more uplifting than my selections from Dante’s Inferno. I wanted to be perfectly honest—but not scare the person—and so I struggled with a response.

Sometime later, I formulated an answer of sorts, pulling together some correspondence shared between fellow cancer patients. So, I e-mailed a response in the form of expectations-rather than advice-that could apply to anyone about to be treated for cancer. Here they are:

Expect to be amazed by how much strength you find in yourself.

Expect the shock of what’s happening to you to continue for some time. Stolid acceptance of your situation is just not realistic.

Expect to feel very alone and, at times, even detached from your surroundings.

Expect to be shown, by the person closest to you, what love really means—maybe for the first time in your life. For me, that was, and always will be, my wife and best friend, Joyce. In Greg Allman’s words: “When life’s game gets so hard, I hold the highest card—the Queen of Hearts.” That’s Joyce!

Expect there to be days when you say to yourself, “I just can’t do this anymore.”

Expect to make outrageous promises to God in exchange for clemency.

Expect to find a whole new group of heroes—nurses.

Expect for your real friends to show up. Be prepared for surprises—both good and bad.

Expect to be truly shaken—and, at times, depressed, by your physical appearance. Just remember: The mirror reflects what you look like—not who you are!

Expect to catch yourself sometimes staring at your children, not wanting to miss a single breath they take.

Expect to catch yourself sometimes staring at your children, not wanting to miss a single breath they take.

But most importantly:
Expect and believe that someday soon you will look at this whole episode of your life—in the rearview mirror!

That’s the best answer I could offer and I pray that it helped—just a little bit!    

Stephen Dugan currently lives in Radnor PA with his wife Joyce and his daughters, Sammy and Celine. This father of two actively pursues many interests.  A former president of the Father’s Association at his daughter’s school, Stephen remains a busy school volunteer. He is a voracious reader of non-fiction and enjoys traveling with his family.  Professionally, Steve’s entrepreneurial side is at work as a partner in the company, VeriFirst.com.

New Patient Resources from the NMDP Office of Patient Advocacy