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Twin
Peaks
I always thought that nightmares had one thing going for them. You woke up. Safe.
With the reassuring reality of daylight, you sigh with relief and snuggle deeper into the blankets while your heartbeat slows to normal. This is the way nightmares are supposed to progress: first the nightmare, then the waking, and finally the comfortable feeling that the really b-a-d things happen to you only in dreams.
At least that's the way nightmares happened with me until the day 20 years ago when I woke up in the recovery room at Duke University Medical Center, to see my husband, George, bending over me. I had asked him to tell me the truth as soon as I opened my eyes. I couldn't bear having to look to see if all of me was still there, if my "twin peaks" were still familiarly in place. To see if I was still "whole." George said, "I love you," and then said, "It was malignant." I remember lying on that gurney, flinging my head back and forth on the pillow and screaming, "No!" with all the strength that the waning anesthesia allowed. And I remember thinking, this is a nightmare -and I am awake!
What I had was breast cancer, and it changed my life. Suddenly and completely. Irretrievably and forever. I was not safe. Not anymore. Never again.
As I lay in my hospital room that day, only dimly aware of the numbing flurry of activity around me, I watched with despair as my lifelong sense of security just floated out the window. Here, in addition to the cancer and the mastectomy, was the nightmare that would never fade: no more security - ever. At first, fear colored every aspect of my life, including my language: with the increasing anxiety, even my sentences became jerky and choppy.
Friends and family surrounded me on that Friday, bringing me hugs and prayers and flowers, and, best of all, themselves. It was wonderfully distracting.
But then Friday night came (as Friday nights always do) and everybody went home. There I was, all by myself. As all of us ultimately are. I lay there in the little white hospital room, in the little white hospital bed, staring up at the little white hospital ceiling...having just swallowed a little white hospital pill that was not working! And my mind drifted back to my unusual parents. My college professor father and my teacher mother never chose the well-worn paths. Every time I had a problem, faced a crisis, or ran into the various and sundry brick walls that are always a part of growing up, one or the other of them would exclaim: "Isn't that fascinating! I wonder how many ways you can deal with this?" And off we would go, exploring possibilities and turning problems into adventures.
Thus, with the terror of a life-threatening and body-altering disease, began the fascination of how to deal with it. Of how to face this new challenge. I started hesitantly to confront my new self and the new view that others would have of me.
My doctor during this time at Duke was, without question, the most unapproachable man I had ever met. He looked like a Russian czar, massive and dramatic, with a lion's mane of flowing white hair. Everywhere he went, a worshipful, white-coated entourage trotted behind, notebooks in hand, writing down every word he uttered. I would have sworn that even the plants in my room stood straighter when he strode in! He was brusque, all business, always in a hurry. My stomach-turning panic was that this man, in charge of my health - my life - scared me to tears. In an abnormal situation, with a desperate need for a reassuring hand on my shaking shoulder and I was totally intimidated by this imposing, intimidating doctor. I began thinking about what I could do to get him to see me as an individual and not just a number on a hospital room door, somehow sensing that such a bond might enhance my chances of recovery.
(How fascinating - what are my options?) I got permission to leave the hospital with George, and we went to a T-shirt shop where I spent $7.99 having a T-shirt made for him: a dark green one with big white letters across the front that said: ONE OF AMERICA'S 10 BEST BREAST MEN.
I almost didn't give it to him. The whole thing was beginning to feel so silly. But, after all, I had spent $7.99 and didn't want to throw money away. You can only begin to imagine the lump-in-the-throat nervousness with which I presented this so-silly shirt to Duke's most not-silly surgeon. He took one look at it, laughed, and said with quiet astonishment, "You...did this...for me?"
And one more time it hit me: We are all alike in that, whatever our role, whatever our profession, whatever our lot in life - all of us are looking for someone to make us feel important. That T-shirt made my brilliant, world-renowned surgeon feel important. Imagine that!
The honest facing of reality and the effort to deal with it creatively started affecting other areas of my life. My family relationships became closer and more open. Two weeks after the mastectomy, my ten-year-old son and several of his friends burst into the kitchen. They looked at me searchingly, and son Joe blurted out, "Are you wearing your artificial breast today?" "No" - I laughed - "I left it in the bedroom." And off they went outside to play. My visiting mother asked, "Are you sure you want your son and his friends discussing your breast?" "He's having to face the fact that he might lose his mother," I responded. "If he needs to take me to school for show-and-tell in order to deal with this, I'll go. Now, there," I said to her, remembering all the times she had said it to me, "is a fascinating idea!"
Marvelous things began to happen. I entered upon a speaking career, which has plunged me into the business community and into the fields of medicine, education, technology, insurance, sales, travel, finance, and government. Fortune 500 companies fill my client list. My presentations are not about cancer, just because of cancer. (Fascinating! I wonder how many ways there are to deal with each day's celebration of new possibilities, with each day's new and unique audience, with each day's wonder at what lies ahead.) Rejoice in your own willingness to step out and you'll see new doors opening for you where once there were only blank walls.
Having had cancer has freed me forever from what I call the Scarlett O'Hara syndrome of: "I can make a new friend...tomorrow. I can make an impact...tomorrow. I can write a book...tomorrow...I can start a new business...tomorrow. I can take more risks...tomorrow." I've had a smack-in-the-face realization that there may not be three score and ten cards in my deck. Because I am not guaranteed a tomorrow, my life has taken a unique and enriching direction. Today.
Isn't that...fascinating? I'd always thought that life was about building security. And then a great teacher - cancer - taught me that this is not what life is all about at all. It taught me that nightmares can become springboards.
How much difference does it make to step outside the bounds of the expected and the ordinary? Five years after finishing the prescribed therapy, I read in the paper that the "doctor from Duke" was coming to Charlotte to do a symposium on breast cancer. As I stepped into the back of the auditorium to hear him speak, he saw me and called out "Emory! Emory Austin!" Five years later, five thousand patients later, he remembered me. "My goodness," I thought - this truly is fascinating."
[And so, dear reader, because I've had cancer, I no longer have any security that is based on guarantees of time. Wherever you are, just raise your hand if you believe you have any more of that kind of security than I do. All of us want to live. All of us want to believe that a dream can come true. Each of us can make at least one dream come true. And doing that might set a brave new pattern! If you want to do what you were put here to do, it's essential to get on with it today.]
Sometimes we face monsters who have names - disease, fear, age, job security, financial hurdles, addictions, cruelty. Conquering these monsters will depend (to some extent) on the patterns we have developed for ourselves in the past and continue to develop today. Celebrate patterns that will bless you!
- Emory Austin
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