Gone ‘round the twist” is slang that implies someone has gone crazy. Certainly, with my cancer diagnosis, my life went ‘round the twist. The visual of going down the U-bend in a pipe appealed to me as an allusion to the sigmoid colon (the body’s U-bend) and to describe this whole crazy experience with colon cancer.

This story is my version of the events that transpired after my diagnosis, pieced together from my sketchy memory, peppered with stories my husband told me of events of which I have no memory, and the many journal entries I wrote during this period of my life. I have changed a few of the names for privacy and moved some events around in time for narrative purposes, but everything included in this story happened.

Prologue

5:30 on the morning of my final chemotherapy infusion, my dogs discovered and chased a rabbit around our backyard. They were unrelenting in their pursuit, all three animals racing to either escape or inflict death.

After securing the dogs in the house, I found the little rabbit lying flat on the ground next to our ancient olive tree. Carefully, I picked her up in my hands, feeling her racing heart, pumping lungs, and unimaginably soft fur. She lay unmoving in my hand. I gently turned her over and felt all the parts of her body, searching for signs of broken limbs or bite wounds. She seemed to have come through her ordeal unscathed. I returned her to a hole in the fence and she hopped away into the dark safety of our neighbor’s dogless yard.

This event has stuck with me as the perfect metaphor for my brush with cancer.

Like the rabbit running for her life, I, too, would drive myself to the edge of death trying to escape colon cancer. Whatever amount of energy I had to sacrifice to fight this thing, I would give. No matter what terrain lay in my way, I would not stop until the danger was gone or until the chase killed me.

For over a year, I was engaged in the ultimate run for my life. In December 2021, I received a diagnosis of Malignant Neoplasm of the Sigmoid Colon, Stage-IVC[1]. In the 10 months that followed, I endured 4 surgeries, 12 weeks of chemotherapy, and 29 rounds of radiation. I suffered through all the physical side effects, emotional traumas, painful recoveries, and sleepless nights one would expect during cancer treatments. Against all odds, I escaped the chasing monster. And I would do it all over again if it meant I can remain here on Earth for just a little longer.

I was determined that cancer would not take me down. No matter what I faced, it would not change who I am, and I would not let it consume my head. Cancer will always be a part of me, stalking from the shadows like a dog sniffing for hidden rabbits in the garden. How long I can stay hidden remains to be seen. But I know one thing for certain: I need to be even better at hiding than I was at running.

Cancer is not a disease that is cured in the conventional sense. Chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation, surgery, and all the modern medical interventions may kill, zap, attack, and remove it from my body, but cancer will never be gone from my life. I can fight it and I can do everything in my power to outrun it, but it will always be a specter haunting my trail. Living out the rest of my life with the shadow of cancer on the edge of my periphery, I will continue to be tested, poked, prodded, scoped, bled dry, cut into, or scanned. Cancer may be forever, but I refuse to live in a perpetual state of fear and uncertainty.

I find myself another rabbit in the garden, hiding from cancer and recovering from this near-death experience, exhausted from running for my life.

[1] pT4a pN2a pM1c for more information on cancer staging: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/colon-rectal-cancer/detection-diagnosis-staging/staged.html