“SURVIVAL IS A CURIOUS THING,” by Cynthia Swan, Opening Ceremony Speaker, El Dorado County Relay for Life

Survival is a Curious Thing

Survival is a curious thing. At this time two years ago, I was in my second round of chemo. 32 years old, and I had breast cancer. As if the surgeries before chemo weren’t bad enough, chemo just got worse and worse. I tried to make light of it when people asked how I was doing. I’d say, “well, it’s not fun but ‘it is what it is,’ so I just have to get through it.” 

Survival was a struggle, though. I had pretty much every side effect known to chemo, and then some. The doctors guessed that the side effects were more severe because of my age but all they could do was give me more and more secondary medications to counter the side effects. Some helped and some didn’t. 

The side effects were cumulative, and before the end of my chemo I actually had to make a decision whether or not to complete my chemotherapy treatment before beginning radiation. The chemo had given me increasingly severe neuropathy – burning in my hands and feet – and the doctors knew that if I completed chemo the neuropathy would probably worsen and potentially be permanent. But if I didn’t finish chemo, they knew that would increase my recurrence risk. It seemed like a fairly enormous decision, and I didn’t have much information to work with. More neuropathy pain, less, higher recurrence risk, less . . . they could tell me what was likely to happen, but not the severity. 

I decided to look at it in black and white, the two extremes. What if I had a cancer recurrence in two years? Would I rather have had less pain in those two years, or was I willing to live with more pain, potentially for the rest of my life, to know I had done everything I could to survive? 

Well, here I am, two years later. As you may have guessed from my odd double-limp walk and the fact that I’m sitting down and trying not to touch anything, I did finish all the chemotherapy and the burning in my hands and feet did worsen to the most severe neuropathy there is and it hasn’t gone away.

But! I just had another MRI last month, and I am, still, 100%, cancer-free. 

Survival is a curious thing, though. It’s not just staying alive, it’s being alive. How you live each day, each moment, is your survival. And you don’t just do it for yourself. If it were just me alone in the world, without the family and friends and people I didn’t even know that were so concerned for my cancer survival, well, I don’t think I would have tried so hard. Not just to survive, but to stay alive in life. 

I used to be a professional Tango dancer and instructor. Argentine Tango was my passion. It was where I felt most alive. But little by little, week by week, cancer treatment made it more and more impossible for me to dance. But I couldn’t give it up. It was like Tango was the thing I was clinging to to feel like I was staying alive and not just surviving. So, I kept going to the dances but I could only dance, you know, a couple of songs in a night, so instead I sat and chatted with people.

That was probably what really got me through everything. There were so many people every weekend asking how I was doing, or they were reading my blog and already knew what I was going through so all they could do was offer hugs and support, and I started to feel like I had to get through it for them. I had to survive, and not just for myself. 

Survival is a curious thing. It’s individual, but it’s not. Family, caregivers and healthcare providers, dear friends, unknown supporters . . . all these people are involved and important in cancer survival. And with that collective effort, we see more and more survivors every year. 

That’s the best thing about events like Relay for Life. The Survivors Lap is so inspiring because it’s just a pure celebration of life and survival. What gets me emotional though are all the people that are here participating for someone they loved and lost to cancer. I now think one of the most brave things a person can do is to walk for or dedicate a luminary to Remember someone dearly loved and taken by cancer.

But we aren’t just a group of cancer survivors and caregivers and people who have lost someone they love to cancer, we also have all these people who have been touched by cancer in some other way, and we are all moved to Fight Back. Everyone here, all of us together this weekend and with the American Cancer Society, all the teams and participants and volunteers, and the memory of so many people not physically with us today . . . we’ve all come together to make a world with more birthdays. 

Survival is a curious thing. Every person here is a part of survival, not just helping more people survive cancer, but keeping more people alive with cancer.

The collective energy of everyone participating in Relay is so inspiring to me as a survivor, I feel honored to be a part of it. Thank you. Thank you for being here, for participating, for giving, for caring . . . and thank you for sharing this survival experience with me. 🙂