The following is the winning essay of our 2021 Nonfiction Writing Contest. Congratulations to Crystal Martinez on her outstanding work!

Surprises with Cancer by Crystal Martinez

It all began with a mysterious and unrelenting pain in my butt. Literally. Every time I tried to have a bowel movement the pain intensified to the point where I found myself screaming, tears rolling down my cheeks. Having just turned 35, I had always seen myself as healthy, proud of never having been hospitalized or needing to see a doctor. I ate a healthy diet, mostly vegetables and was in what most perceive as “good shape” from constant exercise. Surfing, cycling, boot camps, half-marathons. If it burns calories, I did it. Later I would learn the concept of over-exercise that plagues overachieving type-A women like me, how it can cause inflammation in the body. I would learn that my obsession with “healthy eating” in an attempt to make myself smaller even though I was not overweight was just another stressor that put my body over the edge. But at this point, I am ignorant of that and so much more. 

I have a sense that something was wrong with my body, that I must have done something weird while surfing, or running, or maybe it was me getting too bendy in yoga. Yet I have no idea that this mysterious pain was in fact, a large tumor, a cancerous mass sitting on my sacrum, starting to grow, eating away at my bone, wrapping itself up in my root nerves which control bowel and bladder function. I have no idea that this is just the beginning of the pain, or that the pain will intensify to the point where I will need to take 180mg of morphine, or that in a few months I will be unable to walk, stand or even sit. I have no idea that this pain will take over my life for the next two years, or that this pain will intensify to the point that I will no longer want to live. No idea. For now I think that this is something my chiropractor, Dr. Ambert, who has always resolved every incidence of bodily pain with a few adjustments to my spine, can fix. 

Dr. Ambert is the first person who tells me I’m overexercising. “What’s your daily exercise regime?” he asks. 

“Well, I almost always go surfing in the morning. Then in the afternoon, I’ll ride my bike 8 miles to bootcamp where I do a double, then ride my bike back. When there’s no bootcamp, or if the waves are not good, I’ll go to the gym and then for a run and/or a longer bike ride,” I say as if I’m expecting a gold star on my exercise chart. 

Dr. Amber stops writing and looks up from his clipboard. “Do you have any rest days?” 

“Rest days? No. Well, if it’s raining, I’ll do hot yoga.” 

He puts the clipboard down and looks right into me with his concerned eyes. “Honey, that’s way too much. More is not better.” 

He tells me he suspects a bulging disc and that I need to abstain from my normal high-intensity activities and just walk for about six weeks. So I stop surfing, which is especially hard because surfing is what puts me in a vibrant mood for the rest of the day. I stop going to bootcamps with friends. I stop cycling up and down San Diego’s coastline. I stop my four-mile jogs along Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach, the place I’ve always called home. I expect the pain to go away. 

Except that it doesn’t. 

Within a few weeks, the pain starts to invade my entire day. I start asking friends for their abandoned stashes of prescribed pain pills. “What kind of pills?” they ask. I have no idea because I’m quite unfamiliar with the world of narcotics, but I do know Ibuprofen is not even coming close to touching this. They come over with little plastic baggies of white, blue, and yellow tablets: Norco, Vicodin, Flexeril. I take the pills and stand with my back to the heater turned on full blast because the heat seems to relieve some of the pain. 

Despite some initial relief, at some point I begin to take 3am Ubers and Lyfts several times to the ER because my pain has reached “a ten out of ten.” Doctors take X-rays of my spine and find nothing. In the midst of the opioid crackdown, they look at me suspiciously and prescribe 5mg of Norco, not realizing that I’m already taking 10mg of Norco from my friends’ stashes, still not enough to keep me out of the ER. Doctors refer me to the Spine Center for physical therapy, where my assigned nurse practitioner (Amy) and physical therapist (Sylvie) begin to look at me as if I’m a hypochondriac just out for higher doses of narcotics. And when I ask Nurse Practitioner Amy for an MRI, she tells me it’s not necessary, that it’s probably a bulging disc issue that will heal within four to six weeks. 

Six weeks later, on the morning of March of 2018, I’m sitting on the beach, reading and watching the surfers, still waiting for the pain to disappear. Deep into my book, I hear a voice: “What are you reading?” I look up to see an elderly man standing over me, staring at my book (Ask and It is Given) and then at me. His face exudes kindness and genuine interest. But I have no idea how much this stranger will alter the course of my life. 

A pleasant conversation ensues with my new friend Paul, a fellow book-lover and reader of spiritual texts. “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asks. 

“Yes, of course!” I make room for him on my large towel. Pretty soon, our conversation goes into other topics like the bulging disk problem that won’t seem to heal and the pain I’m in. He tells me, “Oh, I know all about that. Let me tell you….” That’s when the conversation turns even more interesting. I find out that Paul was diagnosed with stage-four cancer, that his treatments had failed and his doctors could only offer him hospice care. But instead of turning himself over to hospice care, he decided to come to the beach. “I decided that if I am going to die, I wanna die at the beach,” he says. He tells me that he simply meditated for hours each day on the beach, but instead of dying, he only seemed to feel better and better. So he kept meditating. Months later, he went back to his doctors where they discovered through several scans that he no longer had any trace of cancer in his body. “Meditation healed my cancer! Can you believe it?” he asks me. 

“Yes, I can. Wow. That is just amazing. Thank you for sharing that story,” I say. After talking for over an hour, Paul stands up and says just before he walks away, “I don’t know why we met, but I’m sure it was for a reason.”

Driving starts to hurt. Sitting hurts. Working for the past ten years as an adjunct English instructor at various community colleges and universities, my students start noticing me grimace in pain and ask me if everything’s alright. My 30-minute commute to the college turns into a 60 minute commute because every 15 minutes, I have to pull over, lie down in the back of my car, flat on my stomach just to let the pain die down before I can continue. I start taking Ubers and Lyfts to teach my classes so that I can lie down in the backseat. 

 A few more weeks pass and just when I think the pain cannot possibly get worse, it does. I miss my flight to Salt Lake City, Utah where I am planning to take a snowboarding trip with a few girlfriends. The pain paralyzes me to the point that I cannot get on the plane, or even in a taxi to the airport. I start smoking marijuana, my latest strategic pain intervention, trying to get some relief. When that doesn’t work, I collapse into a hysteria of uncontrolled sobbing while my closest girlfriends board the plane. After getting several where-the-hell-are-you text messages, I manage to send the reply: So sorry. Not gonna make it. 

I call the Spine Center and ask for Nurse Practitioner Amy for the second time this week. By now Amy is screening my phone calls and often has a medical assistant return my calls, which infuriates me. When I finally get her on the phone, I insist, still choking on my sobs, that I know something is wrong with my body, that it’s not just in my head, that I need an MRI. Because if I can’t even get on an airplane, something is severely wrong. She concedes, but also reminds me that it will be a waste of $550, my co-pay. 

Two days later on April 16, 2018 I have my first-ever MRI. The radiology technician is upbeat and friendly. He gives a brief explanation of the 15-minute procedure and tells me that the results of the scan will be available in five to seven days. I lie down on the table and glide into the circular tube as he goes into a separate room just behind the machine to monitor the computer screen. As I slide into the small, dark hole of magnetic resonance imaging, I am silently seething in pain as I lie on my back, trying not to move as tears roll down my cheeks. “You need to be still. If you keep moving, we’ll have to start over,” he says over the loudspeaker. I grind my teeth and hold myself still. When the procedure is over, the technician, appearing quickly at my side, seems to carry a completely altered demeanor towards me as he gently helps me off of the table and walks me to the door as if I were his 80-year-old grandmother. As I exit, he tells me I’ll likely hear back within 24 hours. 

The very next day I receive two missed calls and a voicemail from nurse practitioner Amy. The one who doesn’t know what to do with me. The one who makes me feel like I’m wasting her time. I listen to her voicemail. “Hi! It’s Amy. Please call me as soon as you get this. I’m leaving the Spine Center in an hour, but here’s my personal cell phone number….” 

Shocked by her sudden switch in demeanor, I dial her number and she answers on the first ring. “Hey, honey. Thanks for calling me back. Look, I’m so glad you had the MRI,” she says gently. Before her tone had always been slightly annoyed, busy, like I was taking away her precious time. Now full of kindness and compassion, calling me “honey” it feels like I’m speaking to someone else. “So, the problem, your pain, seems to be stemming from the fact that you have a mass on your sacrum measuring two to three inches.” 

“A mass?” I walk toward my desk and take out a pen and paper. “You mean like…a tumor?” 

“Well. Possibly. Yes, but it doesn’t necessarily mean…cancer. It could be benign. You’ll need to have a biopsy. I’m referring you to Dr. Helmers, an orthopedic surgeon at Kaiser Medical Center in San Diego. He already knows all about you and is expecting your call. Take down his number.” 

After hearing Amy say “I’m so sorry” several times, I hang up feeling vindicated, and then terrified. I realize that her statement is not an apology for how she treated me, but an apology for all that I’m about to go through. I call my mom to give her the news. “Mom, they said they found a mass….” Choking up on the word “mass,” I swallow before continuing. “On my sacrum.” 

Silence. 

“You mean two to three centimeters right, not inches?” she finally asks. “Two to three inches would be huge for a tumor. Just huge. Most are in the centimeter range.” 

 Maybe I did hear wrong. I call Amy back on her personal cell number, asking her to repeat the size. “Yes, two to three inches, about the size of an egg.” 

I try to wrap my mind around it. A tumor. The size of an egg. On my sacrum. I go home and pull out my juicer and start making carrot, beet and spinach juices. I have no idea that within six weeks it would grow to the size of a grapefruit. 

On April 30, 2018, I meet Dr. Helmers who performs the biopsy. I like Dr. Helmers who tells me there’s a good chance that this is benign, not malignant, not cancer. “You’re most likely too young and too healthy for that,” he says. “Though we’re most likely looking at surgery, we should have you back out and surfing within a month or two.” 

One week later I’m sitting in Dr. Helmer’s waiting room next to my mom, hoping for good news about the biopsy. Displayed on the screen is my MRI. I gasp at the size of the illuminated white ball hovering at the bottom of my spine, taking up so much space, looking much bigger than an egg. 

Dr. Helmers finally enters with two other doctors who he introduces me to. We all settle in our seats. Dr. Helmers looks at me with his serious blue eyes and says nonchalantly, “So…it’s cancer.” 

After staring back in disbelief and then sobbing for several minutes, I hear my mother ask in a shaky voice, “Ok. Well, how can we fix it?” She takes out a pen and paper as if writing everything down will contain both of our emotions. At this point I can only digest bits and pieces. 

“…called Chordoma.” 

“A sarcoma….very rare…affects less than one in one million.” 

“…a slow-growing tumor, which means that chemotherapy won’t work because chemotherapy only works on fast-dividing cells.” (Good news) 

“This type of tumor is resistant to radiation, so that’s out as well. So you see, the only treatment option for Chordoma is surgery.” (More good news) 

And just when I think this cancer might not be all that scary, because it will just involve surgery, Dr. Helmers drops the devastating news, like an atomic bomb of Hiroshima-esque proportions, wiping away every thought, dream or plan I’d ever had for my future. 

“The surgery will involve amputation of your sacrum and your root nerves s2-s5.” He looks up at my MRI and with his finger, points along the sacrum, explaining that the tumor is wrapped up in and around the root nerves and how we have to cut the entire thing out in what he calls a resection. “Unfortunately, the root nerves control bowel and bladder function.” 

My mom stops writing and looks up. I straighten up in the chair, wipe away my tears, and look at Dr. Helmers as if he’s just announced that the sky is black and raining zombies. I start to feel as if I am waking up in the middle of a horror film. “What? Are you saying…that I’m going to have to wear diapers for the rest of my life?” Dr. Helmers proceeds to tell me that incontinence is not that bad, that I can still have a full life and…

I tune him out. It doesn’t matter; I’ve already made up my mind. There’s no way in hell I’m having that surgery. I nearly laugh. I pretend to listen to the rest of what Dr. Helmers says, knowing that I will find another way. To appease him, I schedule another MRI in a month to prepare for surgery. 

Over the next few weeks, in desperation, I seek out a second opinion (from another Kaiser orthopedic surgeon) and then a third (from a UCSD radio-oncologist) and then a fourth (a UCLA Chordoma specialist). All four doctors tell me the exact same thing: that surgery is the only treatment for this, the surgery that leaves me incontinent, without any bladder or bowel control. But it gets worse. 

From the Chordoma specialist at UCLA, I find out a more details about the surgery: that besides being left incontinent, the surgery will most likely leave me unable to surf again because of all the hardware installed for pelvic stability, that I may likely have a permanent colostomy, that I will likely have to use a walker and that I may very likely be on pain medication for the rest of my life. That I will have one incision in the front and another in the back. That the surgery will involve a surgical team of four: an orthopedic surgeon, a neurosurgeon, a general surgeon and a plastic surgeon. The more I find out about this surgery, the more I’m convinced I’m not having it. 

I see Paul, the elderly man on the beach, two more times. Both times, I try to get to him, to talk to him, to ask him, but he is too far away and by the time I get to where I had seen him, he is gone.      

I find more bad news on Google and in Chordoma Facebook groups. I find out that statistically, I’m expected to live for only seven more years. I think about dying at 42 years young. I think about all the things I’ve not done yet in my life. How I’ve always wanted to be a writer. How I’ve wanted to go back to school, get a second Master’s in Creative Writing, and inspire others with my writing. How I’ve always wanted to be a blogger and travel around the world with my surfboard. How I’ve wanted to volunteer in orphanages around the world teaching English. Suddenly it feels like there’s no time, like I’ve been wasting my life trying to make more money instead of doing what would really make me happy. Mostly it feels like I haven’t accomplished what I’ve come here to do, whatever that is. 

I ask Dr. Helmers, the surgeon at Kaiser, to refer me to the Chordoma specialist at UCLA, who has convinced me that my local Dr. Helmers has actually never performed one of these surgeries himself. (“Think about it…Chordomas occur in less than one in one million. How many Chordoma patients do you think are actually in San Diego, let alone patients within Kaiser over the last twenty years? I’d be very surprised to see if he performed even one.”) No wonder Dr. Helmers’ eyes had lit up so brightly when talking about the surgery and the state-of-the-art equipment he would be using to saw off my sacrum. 

Dr. Helmers’ denies my request. He really wants to do the surgery himself, to have something impressive to add to his resume: Surgical Resection of Sacral Chordoma with clear margins (never mind damage done to patient). But I don’t push it because I’m still convinced that I’m not having the surgery. 

After traveling down several Google rabbit holes, I do what any other practical, spiritually-minded, highly-desperate cancer patient would do: I decide to fly to Brazil to see John of God, a psychic medium who, according to hundreds of reports across the Internet, performs miraculous healing feats. Tumors gone. Disappeared. Even Oprah traveled there to interview him. Could he make mine disappear? 

By now, I am on higher pain medication and able to handle the flight, even though I have to stand up every thirty seconds and walk the aisle because sitting still hurts. Flight attendants seem to understand my pain and don’t ask. I arrive, planning to stay for three weeks, but I end up coming back home after only ten days because my pain, the pain I think can’t get any worse, skyrockets to new and unprecedented heights. I previously labeled my pain an 8. Then a 9. Then a 10 out of 10. But now it just seems to be a consistent 150, off the charts. 

As soon as I touch down in San Diego, I get in touch with pain management and switch out the Percocet for Morphine. Then I have the scheduled MRI #2 to prepare for the surgery that I am still refusing to have. I don’t expect to see any major changes since one of Chordoma’s most notable characteristics is that Chordoma is a slow-growing tumor, something I hear and read over and over again. Two days later, I receive the report. 

Within six weeks, my “slow-growing” tumor has tripled in size and is no longer the size of an egg, but now the size of a grapefruit. 

In another surprise twist, Dr. Helmers throws in the surgical towel, deferring the surgery to the UCLA Chordoma specialist, stating, “the surgery will be a lot more complex now.” My cancer cells are subsequently re-biopsied because, “it just doesn’t make sense for Chordomas to grow this fast. I wonder if you were misdiagnosed.” But it turns out that I still have Chordoma, just an erratic and unusually aggressive type that perplexes even the oncologist. 

Now, with a monstrous and destructive species invading my body, I want nothing more than to just have the surgery because more continence and surfing, I just want to live. To survive. To not die. Now that I’m in the hands of the highly specialized, highly sought after surgical team at UCLA, the oncologist tells me, “The bigger it gets the more likely it is to spread and once it spreads, it usually goes to the lungs or the brain, and once that happens….” On the same day at UCLA Medical Center, the woman who schedules the surgeries tells me: “it will be several weeks for your surgery to get scheduled.” 

Determined not to die and desperate to live, I call the UCLA surgery scheduler several days in a row, crying, begging for my surgery to get scheduled. “I’m sorry, your surgery involves four different surgeons with different schedules. You have to wait.” Getting nowhere, I opt for a new strategy.

 My ex-boyfriend Mutsu flies from his home in El Salvador to “take care of me,” for three months, the length of time his visa will allow. He insists on coming even though it would mean him taking three months off of work, without pay. Mutsu is half-Salvadoran, half Japanese, a genius combination of human. We met four years ago when I traveled to El Salvador on a surf trip. We’ve been on again and off again for the last four years, mostly due to the fact that we live 2700 miles away, and despite short stints of him living here in San Diego for several months at a time and me living there in El Salvador for several months, neither one of us wants to permanently move away from home. “Why aren’t you together anymore?” friends often asked. “Logistics” I would always say. But unlike any of my past relationships, even when we’re apart, a deep and unconditional love persists between us. 

Even when we were “not together,” Mutsu would call me every night just to check in. If I was dating someone, he would respect my privacy and stop calling. When he found out I was single, he’d start calling again. We never knew how to let go of each other. I always tried, trying to convince myself that I’m better off with someone who lives closer, but every relationship since then never measured up to what I had with Mutsu. 

Unlike Mutsu whose love for me never came into question, I was at times ambivalent. Perhaps because I was divorced. I had already been married for seven years and had been happily single since then. I was a fiercely independent, freedom-seeking, wanna-be world traveler who saw Mutsu as someone I wanted to grow old with when I was ready to settle down again, whenever that was. I have no idea that him taking care of me for three months would change all that. 

 I pick up Mutsu from the airport and we go out to lunch one day at a local cafe where I’m updating him on the current situation of my tumor and the wait for surgery. A woman sitting at the table behind us says, “Excuse me. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear. Every time I hear the word ‘tumor’ my ears just perk up. Have you heard of the Oasis of Hope Hospital?” 

“No, I haven’t.” 

She is sitting with her husband and three little girls. I turned my chair towards her as she continued. “So I don’t know what kind of cancer you have, but I had stage 4 breast cancer, tumors on my liver, in my bones.” 

“Oh my gosh.” I turn my chair a little more towards her.

“But I went to Oasis of Hope Hospital. It’s this cancer clinic in Mexico where they do all these amazing alternative, natural therapies. Anyway, nine months later, all my tumors are gone. I never did conventional treatment.” 

“Wow, what kind of treatments do they do?” I ask. 

“Well, it’s a three-week in-hospital stay where they do high-dose Vitamin C therapy, Vitamin B-17, hypothermia treatments, colon cleanses. You get this dendritic-cell vaccine which is really powerful to fight cancer. You drink green juices and eat super healthy vegetarian meals. Then after that, you go home with their supplements, which they call nutraceuticals and you keep taking those for three months, then come back for three more weeks and do all the treatments again. But it’s amazing. I mean, it really worked for me.” 

Mutsu and I talk with this woman and her family for a few more minutes. I write down the name of the clinic and as they’re leaving, I say “Thank you so much. What was your name?” 

“Crystal.” 

“No way. That’s my name.” 

“Really? Wow.” 

I look into the Oasis of Hope Hospital in Tijuana. I talk to the doctors and a week later, I enroll in the three-week, all-inclusive, in-patient hospital stay. Mutsu comes along. The price tag for the cutting-edge alternative therapies is $30,000, which I divide on four different credit cards. I place all my hope in The Oasis of Hope Hospital, half-luxury hotel, half-hospital with daily high-dose Vitamin C infusions, B-17, green, hypothermia treatments, juices, colon cleanses, a dendritic cell vaccine, and every other alternative cancer therapy that’s ever worked for someone. 

I decide that I want to marry Mutsu one week into my stay, during a routine coffee enema. If anyone asks me the question “When did you know that he was the ONE?” my answer is “during my first coffee enema in Tijuana.” That’s when I knew. Coffee enemas are a well-known detoxification tool used in alternative medicine. Each morning at the hospital a nurse would come in the room with the coffee enema to deliver the treatment. I lay on the cot. She sticks a rubber tube into your rectum and pours coffee through the tube. I have to squeeze my butt cheeks to hold it in for ten minutes and then run to the toilet without letting it out, which is not so easy. 

Anyway, Mutsu never gets grossed out by this. When the nurse delivers the treatment, he doesn’t run out of the room. He pulls up a chair, sits next to me and holds my hand. When the nurse leaves and I have to lay there for ten minutes, he puts the timer on, he rubs my back and kisses my cheek. He caresses my back. He massages my neck. He stays there with me the entire ten minutes. He doesn’t turn on the TV. He doesn’t check his phone. He is so present with me and in the moment with me that I know. Without saying, he says “I’m in this with you.” I just suddenly know: This is the man I want to marry. This is my person, my partner, my soulmate. If I can get a colon cleanse in front of this man and he doesn’t freak out, I know we can do everything and anything together. 

After three weeks of coffee enemas and all the other treatments, I feel absolutely amazing, and confident for MRI #3. 

But I’m devastated when I learn it’s even bigger. I had thought 10cm was a lot on my last MRI. I thought it couldn’t possibly get bigger, but now I see 11cm. I cry and the staff takes turns trying to comfort me, telling me it takes time, not to give up. 

The oncologists at the hospital ask to meet with me and recommend something called Proton Beam Therapy (PBT), a more targeted form of radiation with fewer side effects than traditional photon radiotherapy. Something that could be effective, but not without risk. 

I learn studies have shown that PBT could be just as effective as surgery for Chordoma if the dose was increased to a much higher dose than most cancer patients receive. And by “studies,” I mean two. In the entire world. One in Japan and the other in Italy. Both with fewer than 30 subjects. 

The risks. One is that if you opt for high-dose radiation, and it fails, you cannot have surgery because the much higher dose of radiation damages the skin so much that a surgical incision in that area would not heal. An open surgical wound that will not heal is an invitation for sepsis and death. Two. Because it’s such a rare cancer, you’re basically a guinea pig. Three. Surgery, despite its morbidity, has an 85% survival rate after ten years. With PBT nobody knew the ten-year survival rate. The PBT studies were newer, showing only the five-year survival rate hovering around 80-85%. 

My decision boiled down to whether I wanted a potentially short but good life, or a long but incapacitated life. 

I receive a phone call from UCLA, telling me that they’ve scheduled my surgery for September 30th. 

Instead, I choose PBT. 

In September 2018 I begin treatment, thinking radiation will be a walk in the park. But I am wrong. I forget that this is high-dose radiation, that the tumor involves all my sacral root nerves and the sciatic nerves which run up and down my legs. I quit twice in the first three weeks because I cannot stand the pain, how it feels like someone is taking a bat to my sacrum and whacking it over and over again. How it feels like someone else is then taking a knife and running it down my sciatic nerve, splitting it open. How it feels like I’m being electrocuted from the inside out, like the tumor is retaliating, fighting back, refusing to die. 

Mutsu’s three-month visa is up, so he leaves and I move in with my parents. At this point there’s no way I can continue living on my own. I can’t even drive myself to treatments because sitting on my bum equates to excruciating pain. Prior to cancer, I had been fiercely independent, living alone in my own beach cottage, traveling solo to Latin America on surf trips during summers when I wasn’t teaching. Now I am sick, unemployed, and living with my parents. 

My radio-oncologist calls several times trying to convince me to come back. Both times I reluctantly return because I’m out of options and in the end, I choose to live. And to do so means I need to get through radiation, through the pain, even if that means upping the pain medication to 180 mg of morphine, 9 mg of Dexamethasone, 3600 mg of Gabapentin, 8 mg of Dilaudid along with 30 mg of Flexeril each day. Even if that means my mom comes home with Narcan, a prescription for an emergency, just-in-case opioid overdose situation. Even if pain management doctors at Kaiser strongly disagree with how much pain medication I’m being prescribed by the UCSD radio-oncologist. Even if it means I am not sure what will kill me first: cancer or opioid overdose. Even if it means my mom silently sits outside my bedroom door at night, listening to each breath, Narcan in hand. Just in case. 

During week four of PBT the tumor begins to obstruct my bladder so that I have to go to the ER and have an emergency catheter because I can no longer empty my bladder normally. The next day, I go to the urologist’s office where I undergo the humiliation of trying to learn the process of self-cathing by sticking a thin plastic tube (catheter) up my urethra. Except I fail miserably because I cannot seem to locate my urethra. After one hour, the nurse gives up. Feeling like an utter failure, I go home with supplies, still unsure of how to empty my bladder. At home, alone in the bathroom, I finally figure it out. 

By week five of PBT I am unable to walk, stand, or even sit. I spend most of my days lying flat on my stomach, seething in pain, begging God for mercy. My mom brings me smoothies every morning and makes me golden turmeric tea at night. My sisters come over often. I watch my family sit in chairs and eat at the dinner table while I lie on the carpet, hoisted up by my elbows, eating the same meal. I attempt to help my mom empty the dishwasher, but I cannot stand long enough, so I go back to lying down. When I travel from my bedroom to the bathroom, I use a new walker my parents bought for me. Sometimes on the way, I fall. They pick me up. 

My mom takes me to PBT each day with me lying in the back of the car. When we arrive, she takes out my walker where I walk as if I’m a 90-year-old woman to the front doors. From there, because I cannot sit in the waiting room chairs and because standing hurts too, the nurse escorts me past the people in the waiting room whose eyes follow me with sadness, to a private room with a bed where I lie down on my stomach until I’m called for my appointment. 

In November of 2018, my eight weeks of radiation treatment are finished. I ring a bell. I’m given an MRI, expecting a positive result. Because who could go through that much pain and come up empty-handed? The MRI results come to my email. Nervous, I scan the document and my heart drops into my stomach when I see the words “slightly larger.” Sobbing, I call my radio-oncologist who tries to convince me that this is just post-treatment inflammation, and that I need to wait three more months for my next MRI to see real changes. But I’m desperate for some good news.

I wait the three months. February 2019 comes and I am hanging on to hope by a thread, desperate, needing more than anything to hear that finally, I made progress, that the tumor is smaller. Full of anxiety, I go to get my MRI and wait nervously for the results, which come five days later. 

When the MRI report lands in my inbox, my eyes scan the email: large destructive mass…14.1 cm x 12 cm x 10.7 cm…measures larger than previous study. 

Larger? 14cm! I start sobbing directly into the carpet, screaming, punching pillows. My mom tries to calm me. I remember the oncologists’ warning: “The bigger it gets, the more likely it is to spread, and once it spreads…” I Google to find out what fruit best represents the size of my tumor: a honeydew melon. Later I go to my appointment with the radio-oncologist who tells me that it looks like the tumor may be infiltrating my bone marrow. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds like one step closer to death. Now that PBT has failed, I soak in a bath of despair and wonder why I didn’t just get surgery and sink into a deep hole of self-pity. I start praying to not wake up in the morning. 

My friends hear I’m not doing so well, so many of them come to visit me. Two of my close friends are both pregnant with their first child. While they share their latest ultrasound with their babies growing inside, I share my MRI’s with a rare and invasive species growing inside. It almost feels like we have something in common: we both have black and white images showing something growing, taking up more and more space in our bodies. We both have pain. While their babies put pressure on their lower back and internal organs, my tumor plays tug-of-war with my sciatic nerves and eats away at my bone. We both use fruit and vegetables to convey size and shape. While on social media they announce that their baby is the size of an avocado at 16 weeks, or a head of a cauliflower at 27 weeks, I tell them how my tumor was the size of an egg at diagnosis, the size of a grapefruit six weeks later, and now the size of a honeydew melon just after radiation. Yet we also have nothing in common. While they are intentionally growing and nurturing the fetus of a precious newborn baby, I am inadvertently growing a monstrous and destructive mass that wants to invade my organs and take over my body. While they are happily looking forward to the future with their new baby, I am trying to survive day by day, hoping to go beyond my seven-year prognosis. My heart opens with joy and excitement for their new adventures in motherhood, while their hearts break for me and my misadventures in the land of cancer. 

After they leave, my anxiety settles and I search my mind for my next move. A recurring thought runs a loop over and over again: There has to be another way, there has to be, There has to be another way. There–

Wait. The man on the beach. Paul. Remember? 

How could I have forgotten? Cancer. Meditation. Cancer gone. Was that a coincidence that I just happened to meet a random stranger on the beach who told me he had healed himself with cancer just weeks before I was diagnosed? I remember the last words he said: “I’m not sure why we met, but I’m sure there’s a reason.” 

Meditation. What do I have to lose? I decide that until I figure something else out, at least I can try it. At this point, I have no idea how much meditation will change my life. 

I start to meditate that day, promising myself to do one hour every day. After seven days, it feels like my anxiety and fear completely evaporated from my body. I have a light, breezy everything-is-going-to-be-OK feeling. I know this is good for my mental health if nothing else. By week two, I love it so much that I decide to do two hours a day, sometimes three. 

After several weeks, I start to notice that I can sit for longer periods of time and I begin having dinner at the dinner table, sitting in an actual chair, with my family. I notice that I can stand longer, so I start making my own smoothies in the morning. I start emptying the dishwasher for my mom. I start walking without the walker. The tumor no longer seems to be impacting my bladder as it starts emptying normally. I throw out all the catheters. 

May 1, 2019. Time for MRI #….? I don’t even know at this point, but three months have passed since my last scan and I’m due for the next one. Three months have passed since I started meditating. I should feel overwhelmed with fear and anxiety, pondering the never-ending list of what-ifs that usually come just before a scan. But I don’t. This time, I don’t give the outcome a second thought. Instead, I stroll toward radiology as if I am going to get a haircut. Meditation has put me in a sweet place of present-moment awareness and shut off the anxiety button in my brain. Later I realize this is what it means to let go of the outcome. 

May 2, 2019. It’s been one year since my initial diagnosis. I’m not thinking about my MRI. I don’t expect to hear for another five to seven business days. After my morning meditation, I see an email announcing me as the winner of a scholarship, all expenses paid, to attend a weeklong meditation retreat in Portland, Oregon that July. I delight in the news and drive to buy my mom a mother’s day gift. When I arrive back home, my mom greets me at the front door. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you. Dr. Quenelle called. Your tumor’s smaller!” 

“What?” I race to my computer, open my email, scan the report. 10.7 x 5.9 x 6.5 cm…smaller than the previous study in which it measured 14.1 cm x 12 cm x 10.7. 

I take in a deep breath, let it go slowly and feel the release of tears push through. I stare at the word I’ve been wanting to see for so long: smaller. Relief comes in all directions and surrounds me in a comforting embrace. I sit there for a long time, listening as my mom gets on the phone and starts dialing family members. I go through my medical record and see that prior to this MRI, I had eight scans all with the word “larger” in the report. Ninth time’s a charm. For the first time, I look forward to my appointment with the radio-oncologist to view the imaging results. 

 Two days later, I wake up at 3am and sit straight up in bed because the link between meditation and healing slaps me in the face. Winning the scholarship to attend a meditation retreat! Finding out my tumor has shrunk! On the same day! I suddenly see the connection, the synchronicity, a divine message of guidance telling me to keep going, to keep meditating. 

Later I learn that Psychologist Carl Jung coined the term “synchronicity” and defines the term as a situation “to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.” A serendipitous event. That July, I attend the seven-day meditation retreat where I learn that synchronicity is divine feedback,  a sign that your energy is in alignment with your desires. 

In August, I move out of my parent’s house, back into my own. I go back to work. I start surfing again. I see my radio-oncologist, also a surfer, in the water. He seems to be in a state of awe. I keep meditating. 

The following September I have my next MRI and find out the tumor has shrunk by almost 70%. I keep meditating. 

After titrating down slowly on my medication, by October of 2019 I am off every single pain medication. The 180mg of morphine, the 3600mg of Gabapentin, the 9.0mg of dexamethasone, all of it, down to zero. I never want to touch another white, pink, or blue pharmaceutical again. So I keep meditating. 

Every four to six months afterwards, I have an MRI. Every time, the tumor gets smaller and smaller and smaller. I keep meditating. Sometimes I cry when I try to hike the same places I used to with effortless ease, and can’t make it to the top. Sometimes I cry when I try to pop up quickly on the surfboard like I used to, but can’t. So I take my atrophied muscles to the gym. I work to build them up again, so I can hike, bike and surf again like I used to. It takes me a year to get my strength back up to where it was before cancer. I start traveling again. México, El Salvador, Costa Rica. I keep meditating. Mutsu decides to move to California. 

In July of 2021, I finally see the words “no evidence of disease” on my medical report. Surprise. I keep meditating. 

Thanks to Crystal and everyone who participated in our inaugural Nonfiction Writing Contest! We can’t wait for next year’s awards!

 

If you’re interested in more posts about writing contests, then you might also like:

• List of Short Story Contests (Updated for 2022)
• List of Poetry Contests: Where to Submit Your Poems (Updated for 2022)
• What to Do After Winning a Writing Contest: 5 Ways to Celebrate Your Win
• How to Enter a Writing Contest: 8 Tips for Success