PERSONAL STORIES
The Weight of Normal
Part One: A journey of connection, identity, and what it means to keep becoming after cancer.
Written by: Mike Tirone, Ulman Foundation Board Member
Waking up each morning to take on the day looks different to a cancer survivor. As your feet touch the ground, you don’t consciously think about that dreadful first diagnosis day 26 years ago, or even the fourth diagnosis day just three years ago – but it’s there, within you. It’s part of your DNA for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not. I’m Michael. I’ve survived four cancer diagnosis days and as much as I don’t want that to define me, it surely defines my life after cancer.
Whether it is during a long training run for an upcoming race, or having drinks with friends on a roof deck, or on a flight with some bad turbulence on my way to a fun new destination (which is where I’m currently reporting from), thoughts of life, death and everything in between seep into my mind. Existential thinking is commonplace because I’ve toed the edge of living, seen the precipice, and now back on ‘more firm’ land, I have gained a greater appreciation for life I so gratefully still have.
On the outside, it looks to those unaware of my involuntary title of ‘survivor’ that I live a life that most closely relates to ‘carpe diem.’ I get told things like “wow, you are living your best life” or “how do you have time to do all these things?” But by comparison, it’s a ‘normal’ life and I’m content with that. Because for several years of my life, it was anything but ordinary: weeks leading to months in hospitals, failed treatments, severe infections, utter despair, perpetual fear, constant uncertainty.
All while trying to be a 13-year-old who didn’t know if the changes in my body were puberty, cancer, or some twisted mix. Trying to fit in socially as a high school freshman, bald, visibly (and invisibly) scarred from radiation, and rail thin. Being asked what anti-nausea medicine I liked most and if I wanted to freeze my barely developed sperm to become a parent decades later, rather than which English literature class I wanted to take and what girl I would ask to the dance – life was throwing the big tests at me early, so I didn’t have time to think about the insignificant school exams, I had to find a way to survive. What was normal then, was never going to be normal again.
And every day while I was sick, I visualized and prayed for normal, and now, more distanced from that abyss, I sure as hell won’t take for granted my ‘normal life.’ Today, I squeeze every ounce out of it; I say yes often, I book that spontaneous trip, I take that risk, I fill my calendar, I find that time, I play another round, I stay until last call, I leave no metaphorical life stone unturned. Because I have no assurances in this new life and cannot ever get too comfortable thinking that I will never encounter another diagnosis day, another medical complication due to the years of chemotherapy and radiation, another life setback. That’s not how survivors like me get to live. I swapped the slow drip of chemo bags to save my life for the steady, subtle drip of a survivor’s paranoia and hypochondria throughout each day. But as quickly as that rushes to mind as I get out of bed, it disappears as life begins again.