Identity

I have a new identity now: cancer patient. I've only been a cancer patient for less than a month, but already I feel as though this identity has taken over my life. Almost every minute of every day is occupied with cancer: preparing myself for treatment, taking medications, answering people's questions, sending updates, researching on the internet, planning healthy anti-cancer meals, making appointments, going to appointments, fighting side effects. Every phone caller and emailer wants to know how I'm doing with the treatment. Every invitation to do something has to be checked against my chemo schedule and weighed against the risk of overfatigue and catching an infection. The only escapes from cancer, cancer, cancer are sleep, movies, and books.

The worst part is that even after I'm cured, I'll always be a cancer survivor. I'll never be able to blithely eat a piece of barbequed chicken again without worrying about the carcinogens. All of my lifestyle decisions will be made with the risk of recurrence on my mind. I'll have to worry about job discrimination and health insurance, and possibly also how to adapt to chronic long-term effects of chemo and radiation. Many survivors report both chemo side effects that persist long after chemo is over, such as fatigue and cognitive problems. And almost everyone reports that they were changed permanently by the experience, although many seem to say that they are changed for the better. I hope I will be able to say that in the end.

The cancer patient identity feels different from my other identities, as an Asian-American female, as a snowboarder, as an expat, as a manager, as a daughter, as a sister. I'm not aware of those identities all the time. I only really feel them when I am facing discrimination, or with snowboarders, or with other expats, or at work, or with my family. But being a cancer patient feels like a 24-7 role. I'm obsessed with it at the moment. Even as I'm watching a movie or a book, in the back of my mind, I'm still very conscious that I'm doing it purposely to distract myself from my condition. And if cancer or chronic illness or death from illness is mentioned in the movie or book, then my brain automatically starts comparing how the character's situation is similar or different to mine.

It's hard to believe that one month ago, I didn't even know what non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was.