The Most Human Question

CoffeeSD · Recording: The Most Human Question

 

I think that anyone who is diagnosed with a serious illness will ask the question, “Why me?” Especially if the person is young, or if it’s a particularly debilitating illness, it seems all the more frustrating: Why me? What did I do wrong? How did I bring this on myself?

            I was told (immediately after diagnosis by the doctor who called me with the news) that there was nothing I could have done to cause (or prevent) this cancer. Others reinforced this idea, as well as the fact that there was nothing I could do to stop it. Without medical intervention, of course. However, it’s almost impossible not to question. It’s human nature to be curious. We need to know the answers; we need to know the why. I felt like I’d been cursed with a disease out of the blue; there had to be a reason. 
           I looked for anything linked to decreasing your breast cancer risk, and I’d already been doing all of it. I’d breastfed, exercised, didn’t smoke, and had a healthy BMI. For several months every year, I eat organic vegetables straight from my own garden and from the farmer’s markets in town; I was perplexed as to how I could find food any fresher or healthier than that. Still, I got cancer.

So, I looked up every known factor that could have led to an increased risk of breast cancer. Not a single one applied to me. Nada. I didn’t have even one risk factor, yet I still got cancer.

Doom-scrolling one day, I saw a message on a cancer support website that “Cancer doesn’t care”. The article described so many people who lived healthy lifestyles but who were still diagnosed with cancer at young ages. There were vegans, fitness instructors, marathon-runners…pretty much anyone you would imagine to be the last person on earth to be diagnosed with cancer. It was disturbingly comforting because it meant I wasn’t the only one that felt unfairly targeted by this disease. These people were healthier than me! They’d done all the right things, like me-- quite frankly, way better than me-- and they still weren’t out of danger. Still, it was a conflicted, confusing feeling that left me frustrated.

Part of the frustration was not having any answers. When I finally did get some sort of answer, it took me in an unexpected direction: I had a CHEK2 genetic mutation. The CHEK2 gene typically helps with DNA repair; in my case, at any time, some event could trigger my mutation and this gene would then choose to not repair my DNA and instead give me cancer. (Note that my degrees are in writing and teaching, not in genetics, so I may be missing some crucial details, but still-- who gave this gene so much power? Did nobody quality check the CHEK?) Unfortunately, genetic mutations are one of the few risk factors that people have absolutely no control over. And so, alas, I did have a risk factor, but one that I couldn’t change. The CHEK2 mutation is thought to lead to a 20-25% increased risk of breast cancer, as well as an increased lifetime risk of colon and possibly other cancers (more research is needed). It’s less common than the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, which carry a greater lifetime risk of breast cancer and are more well known. Still, known genetic mutations are only the cause of 5-10% of breast cancers! (Crazy, I know.) Researchers suspect there are more mutations that simply aren’t yet known, but there is still a whole lot of mystery in the cancer world.

I saw this firsthand in my Young Survivor Coalition discussion group the other day. (We’re a group of women who were diagnosed with breast cancer under age 40.) The women were discussing the idea of stress or trauma as possible causes of cancer. Some of the women seemed to find comfort in this possibility; again, I think about that natural human tendency to need a reason for why bad things happen. Still, most of these ideas regarding stress were dismissed or disproved; we know that there are other causes of cancer out there, but we simply don’t know enough about genetics or all the possible environmental risk factors at this time. Maybe someday oncologists really will have all the answers; for now, they are well-educated guessers. (I mean that in the nicest way, of course.) They use the evidence available to make the best predictions possible, but it seems the real reasons behind breast cancer are still more murky gray than black and white.

As I continued to question why myself and these other young women were diagnosed with cancer seemingly out of the blue, I realized that asking myself these questions wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I could take myself on a downward spiral asking why bad things happen to good people, but I needed to focus my attention in a positive direction.

I felt more motivated to try to do something, even if all I could do were seemingly tiny things. Could I be positive influence on my kids and students? Of course. Could I try to bring joy and laughter to other people? Certainly. Could I donate a little time or money to others? Sure. Could I write something that makes a valuable impression on someone, even inspires them? I hope so. I considered what gifts I was born with and focused on how I should use them. Maybe I could even join my gifts together with others and make a greater difference in this crazy world. 

Maybe we don’t need an answer for our hardships; we need to create our own reason for getting through them. We need growth even when life forces us through regression. To me, going through cancer was a little like being a phoenix: I had to go through the fires of treatment, but I could still be reborn from the ashes.