Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

getting a cancer diagnosis

You Get To Decide

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I’ve long held that the most difficult times of our lives are when are forced in some way to redefine who we are.

We go from being a teenaged high school student in June to a nearly adult college kid in September. Then, in a blink of an eye, we go from college kid to full-time working person [“let’s hope so,” says every parent of a college student].

Change never seems to stop.

Some of us go from single to partnered. Some of us go from partnered to single, and back to partnered again.

Childless to parent. Parent to empty-nester. Then parenting our own parents.

Most of us go from well to ill to well again too many times in our lives to count.

There are also occasions when we go from being an important someone in a job we love to being a jobless nobody whose confidence is shot.

It just keeps coming.

All of these moments are times of profound change and redefinition. These are the challenging moments when we are very likely to ask the question, “Who the hell am I now, after all of this?”

And it’s within the question that possibility lies.

Twenty months ago my friend, writer and coach Dr. Laurie Foley, received the life-changing diagnosis of advanced stage ovarian cancer. She immediately put her work life on hold and threw herself into learning everything she could about cancer. She identified great doctors and partnered with them in her treatment. She told me, “I am going to be the very best patient any of them have ever had.” And she was. She joined support groups, became a regular speaker at a medical school, read research and reports. She even made friends with her health insurance company.

She was all-in in the world of ovarian cancer, and it was rightly her entire focus.

Week before last, when the results of two last tests came in, Laurie found out that – after twenty months of energy and attention – she’s officially in remission.

That was a great day.

It also happened to be a day when I was visiting, so after the squealing, high-fiving, and hugs, Laurie and I talked about What Remission Will Mean. [Oh, and we took the selfie, above.]

“I’m thinking,” Laurie started, “that it really means re-mission. For so long my mission has been ovarian cancer – now I get to find a new one. I get to re-mission.”

There’s that possibility I mentioned earlier.

To consciously choose a new mission. Maybe related to the old one, maybe a totally new one created By Laurie, For Laurie – and to bring her many gifts to the world.

Re-missioning.

What a promise. What potential in that deft little phrase.

What possibility.

If you’re smack dab in the middle of your own redefinition, this is what you remember. Yes, things have changed. Laurie will never be a person who hasn’t experienced cancer. Me, neither. You may not ever have the same job title, or the same spouse, or the same little ones running through your house using a dishtowel as a superhero cape.

Those moments may, indeed, be gone forever.

But you can always re-mission.

You can find something new, engaging, interesting and fun.

Your possibilities, in fact, are quite endless.

To Freak Out, Or Not To Freak Out

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It was a year ago today – the Sunday after Thanksgiving – that I found the lump. The lump that turned out to be cancer.

And what a year it’s been.

That Sunday, I was at the computer trying to make sense of the strange things happening to my body. Of course, I used the symptom checker at WedMD.com. [Also known as “Hypochondriacs R Us.”] One of the options it spit out was thyroid disease.

“I have a thyroid?” Seeking the best-of-the-best information, I went to the Johns Hopkins website, where I learned that my thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland at the base of my neck, in charge of my metabolism. I put my hand there. It felt like a swollen gland. Hopkins said that if I swallowed and the lump moved up and down then it was likely I had a thyroid nodule.

I swallowed. It moved.

I freaked out.

It was not pretty. My mind raced from disastrous outcome to disastrous outcome. I spun story after story, none of them with a happy ending. Oh, I was a gray little Eeyore of a woman, muttering gloom and doom, misery and unhappiness.

But then I had to stop. Because crisis requires consistent, sustained focus. And panic trumps focus. Every single time.

And I had to focus to make my way through what was, at times, a baffling medical process.

The day after I found the lump, the medical machinery got moving with my first appointment with a doctor which led to an ultrasound of my neck which led to a fine needle biopsy which led to a meeting with a surgeon which led to surgery which led to a meeting with an endocrinologist which led to a meeting with a nuclear medicine doctor which led to radiation, which, months later, led to an outcome – disease free.

I never thought I’d say it, but I am so very grateful to have had cancer. It was a challenge I was handed, and I handled it. I’m more myself today than I’ve ever been. And I’m grateful for that.

And that’s my message to you today. Challenges will come. And they will come to you. And those you love. You may find, in that challenging instant, “To freak out, or not to freak out” becomes the question.

Freaking out in a crisis is a way to get our internal chaos to match the external chaos we face. There’s a comfort and balance in it, you know, because it’s all… matchy-matchy. But a freak out is not sustainable over the long term – panic saps your energy so you lack the ability to help yourself, or help others.

I’ve found that the ticket to managing a challenge is to freak out if you need to freak out, and do a thorough job of it. But then gather yourself together as soon as you’re able, so you can put your time and attention on whatever it is that’s facing you.

Because there is good stuff there if you know where to look.

Every challenge I’ve faced – and I’ve faced cancer, unemployment, divorce, death of a loved one – has been a moment of discovery. And, if you’re open to it, it will be for you, too.

A crisis point can be the moment when you discover what’s important to you, and the depths of your own strength and resilience. You discover who you really love, and who really loves you.

Getting the stuffing kicked out of you, ironically, provides an wonderful opportunity to become a fuller, richer version of yourself. But only if you let it. So why not let it?