Objective Reality

Ever since I was diagnosed, I've learned that so much of life's hardships become more bearable when you are able to build and lean on a network of loyalty, support, and love, and gather around you people who will stand by you and help you. But the thing is you have to let them in; you have to let them see the heartache, pain and vulnerability, and not cloak those things in a shameful darkness, and then you have to let those people who care about you help you. 

It has taken six months of solid living with cancer and IPF to realize an important truth and that is the following: Barring some physical pain or other physical impediment brought on by cancer and IPF, it isn't the diseases that would prevent me from going on vacations or buying a new home or doing anything else I long to do. Rather, it is a paralyzed mind-succumbing to the fear and unpredictability that my diseases would deny me my dreams. In its paralysis, the mind cannot form contingency plans; it cannot be brave and bold and forward-thinking; it cannot accept what is without running from what will be. In one of the many ironies that have come with having an incurable prognosis, it is as if by accepting the inevitability of my death from these diseases, I have freed myself from the paralysis. In accepting my death, I have learned to live more fully and completely than I have before. Similarly, I can move forward now with some degree of certainty; I can plan for myself and for my family, for as much as I emphasize living in the here and now, living and loving those who we love by necessity requires some degree of planning, of thinking about what might be, of dreaming for them if not necessarily ourselves, I rejoice in my liberation, in my own courage to move forward, in the rebirth of a dream I once thought was forever lost to me. 

I suspect that the old man and X, like many people, are more afraid of death than they are in love with life and that an animalistic fear overrides whatever rational intelligence they possess; I would guess that they fear the unknown of what Shakespeare called “the undiscovered country”, the probable nothingness they believe lies beyond this life despite their wavering belief in God; they fear having the fire of their existence being extinguished as if they had never been; they fear being small and irrelevant and forgotten. I’ve seen people on social media proclaim to a mostly unbelieving audience only days from death how they’re going to still beat their cancer. I read somewhere that those people who cling to such unrealistic hopes have egos that cannot fathom their own nonexistence, the very notion so incomprehensible, so incongruous with everything that has ever been their reality, so wrong that their minds must reject, reject and reject until there can no longer be denial of what in fact is objective reality.

I don’t want to mislead in suggesting that I don’t have an ego – we all do – a place from which our arrogance and conceit are born. My ego thrives on a belief in, and the need to continually cultivate, my inner strength and courage, my innate sense of grace and dignity that has heretofore allowed me to withstand the vicissitudes of life with a brutal self-honesty, and then to arise after shouting the expletives and shedding, the tears smiling and laughing at myself. I’ve never been a beauty nor have I ever been the smartest person at school or work, but because of the circumstances of my life and the successes I have achieved despite those circumstances, I have always believed myself to be uniquely spiritually strong and resilient. I am good at dealing with the harshness of life’s reality. I have faith and pride in my own spiritual invincibility.

I couldn’t say it better than Albert Camus, who wrote:


In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

For me, not knowing when is enough, raging and raging like a wild irrational beast, denying one’s own mortality, clinging to delusion and false hopes, pursuing treatment at the cost of living in the moment, sacrificing one’s quality of life for the sake of quantity, none of this is graceful nor dignified and all of it denies us of our contemplative and evolved humanity; such acts do not cultivate an invincible spirit; such acts are not a testament to inner strength and fortitude. For me, true inner strength lies in facing death with serenity, in recognizing that death is not the enemy but simply an inevitable part of life. (I say all this while acknowledging that everyone defines strength differently. These are simply my views and not a judgment of others’ choices.)

Ever since I learned that if the cancer did not kill me, the pulmonary fibrosis would, and I have a very dim prognosis, more than one person has wrote to me on the resigned tone of my blog posts, as if I have accepted my death from these diseases as a foregone conclusion, even if I don't know when exactly. More than one person has told me that I seemed to have lost my traditional fierceness, the same fierceness that has allowed me to succeed against all odds. Even my mom accuses me of being a defeatist, that by conceding my fate, I am succumbing to the disease, that I have stopped fighting.

My mom and my husband have misinterpreted my actions. It’s true – I have spent the last few months confronting my mortality, accepting the inevitability of my death in all likelihood from my cancer, trying to find peace with my destiny. But what Kevin and others don’t understand is that with acceptance and peace, I have learned to live more fully and completely in the here and now, that I now live with a fierceness, passion and love that I’ve never known. In what is the greatest irony of all, I have come to realize that in accepting death, I am embracing life in all of its splendor. Indeed, that part of me that believes in things happening for a reason, believes that I am, through this cancer journey, meant to understand within the depths of my soul this paradox of death and life.

I don't visit support group sites much anymore. I don't research alternative treatments anymore, While advocates of alternative treatments say you should do things that do not cause harm, putting aside the financial expense of engaging in such treatments, these require a fair amount of energy to research and to generally pursue, that for me detracts from my ultimate objective of living in the moment. I don’t research conventional treatments much either these days. I’m honestly too busy living, too busy spending time with my family, too busy teaching, too busy pursuing a huge project that involves hopefully becoming homeowners  (more about that later). The time will come where I will have to focus once again on cancer and IPF, on clinical trials, on choosing new therapies, but the time is not now. Now, even as death lurks all around me, I live fully and completely while I am relatively healthy and pain-free; now I suck the marrow out of this glorious life I have been given.

That all being said, nothing is ever so simple, is it?

Last week when I was in the hospital, I expressed to my doctor that I had been running from hospital to hospital just searching for someone to fix me. I expressed to him my wishes. "I want to be clear that I am not one of those people who want to cling to life by a fingernail, that I will always choose quality over quantity, that facing death with dignity and grace means more to me than adding days to my life on this planet," I declared. But then I paused. I voiced next what I had not verbalized before, "But in telling you this, I feel like I am betraying my husband and my children, that for them I should choose to live as long as possible at any cost to myself, that time with them is priceless."

What will my children think of me one day? How will they judge me? Will they call me a defeatist too? Will they resent me for not fighting harder, for not expending more energy on figuring out ways to extend my life? Would they admire me more as a woman who lived well in spite of her disease or would they respect me more if I were like that old man being wheeled into an oncologist’s office? Would I be setting a better example for them if I raged or if I went quietly into the good night? I don’t know the answers to these questions. And I don’t know whether those answers should really influence my decisions about my own life. All I know is that I love them.

I know my children, my mother, and my husband want me to fight harder and for me to be here for as long as I possibly can. I just don't know if I can do that...

I am working to find my own stability when it comes to balancing a life that involves cancer and fully living too. It is a daily struggle, but a struggle that I am conquering, at least today. I’m asking – begging even – for your continued prayers, thoughts and good vibes. For Kevin. For me. For our three kids. Kevin and I are struggling so much these days. We are trying to find what joy that remains but it is nearly impossible. I find myself crying to anyone who will listen and even to those who might not want to hear it. It’s awful.

Love you all and truly mean it and God loves you too,

Shanna xoxoxo

LUNGevity National Hope Summit: I'm participating in an event to raise money to fight lung cancer—and I need your help!
I'm planning to attend LUNGevity Foundation's National HOPE Summit in Washington, DC, in May - it's a special conference just for lung cancer survivors like me. If I can raise $1000 or more in donations, LUNGevity will cover my travel expenses, including US round-trip transportation and hotel accommodations.
Proceeds from this fundraiser will benefit LUNGevity Foundation, the leading private provider of research funding for lung cancer. LUNGevity Foundation is firmly committed to making an immediate impact on increasing quality of life and survivorship of people with lung cancer by accelerating research into early detection and more effective treatments, as well as providing community, support, and education for all those affected by the disease.
Please join me in my efforts to stop lung cancer—the leading cancer killer—now!
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