Nothing Important is Ever Easy

I told my boss about the diagnosis.

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?

- Mary Oliver, from the poem “Halleluiah”

I told my boss at work about the diagnosis and it was surprisingly hard.

As the phone rang once, twice, three times, my gut started doing somersaults. It felt like that time I got on stage in Oxford in 2009 to do a TED talk in front of a few hundred strangers and very important people. Public speaking is a fear worse than death, they say.

Now that I’m actually confronting death, I can confirm the similarities. The difference, of course, is that one results in the end of any further possibility of life.

I wanted to spill the beans on Friday, but we had other things to discuss during our regular chat and the moment came and went. Now that it’s Monday, I’ve had the weekend to think it through and gird my loins (kegels are recommended ahead of prostate surgery).

My plan was to project a sense of calm assurance in order to give her the confidence that I’m still focused on the job, but as soon as she answered, everything disintegrated. I could hear myself talking, but I had left my body and was standing on the other side of the room. My voice was tinny and distant and barely audible over the roar and whine of a blooming panic attack.

Here are the quivering, entirely-unprofessional words I stammered: “I haven’t been feeling well lately (a lie; there have been no symptoms whatsoever). As it turns out there’s something going on with my prostate (this is putting it rather mildly don’t you think). Gleason score, biopsy, doctors appointments, scans. I’ll probably need to get surgery. It’s cancer.”

It really couldn’t have gone worse. I would not have been surprised and may have been slightly relieved if she’d said, “Cancer? Unacceptable. You’re fired.”

But of course that didn’t happen. She was understanding, sensitive, and as kind as she’s always been in the 8 years I’ve known her, and she asked how she could help.

“I’m all in with you and your family to get to the other side,” is what she actually said.

What I’m learning about having cancer is that it’s so much more than the physical biology of the diagnosis and treatment. The mental and emotional toll is just as significant, if not more so.

You can find hundreds of thousands of words, podcasts, videos, and diagrams on risk factors and treatments and recovery plans, but there isn’t much about how to tell your boss that you have cancer and you’ll be out for a spell because of surgery. Not many surgeon’s pamphlets explain how the news might affect your kids when you tell them, or what toll it might take on your partner.

At least with the surgery, I can give that part away. Get it off my plate. Unload it to the experts. The rest of it is often up to us to figure out and ramble through.

I’m guilty of the trudging that Mary Oliver writes about. I do indeed forget at times how wondrous the world is and how miraculously kind some people can be. If nothing more, this diagnosis is helping me pay closer attention and see clearly those who have my back, love me for who I am, support me no matter what. Without them, this would all be so much harder and less meaningful and hardly worth it.

None of this is easy. It all takes courage. But the difficulty is a good sign. Nothing important is ever easy.

Image: Mary Oliver with her longtime partner Mary Malone in Provincetown, Mass.