The Switch

October 13, 2010

Scott J. Capozza, MS, PT

I’ve never asked the question, “Why did I get cancer?”  There probably is a physiological answer as to why the cells in my body decided to go rogue and wreck havoc on my insides.  The bigger question (and the one that is harder to answer), is “Why did I survive cancer?”  Is there a reason why I made it through my cancer journey?

Initially, the answer was not clear to me.  Less than six months after I had finished chemotherapy, I received a call from my good friend Alissa.  Her father had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer.  Alissa was one of my classmates at Ithaca College; we had known each other since sophomore year and had become good friends.  The year I went through my cancer journey, it seemed like she was always by my side: visiting me in the hospital while I recovered from surgery, helping me study for the tests I missed, driving 3 hours on the weekends in the summer to visit me while I was home receiving chemotherapy.  When she called me to tell me about her father, she was obviously upset.  Naively, I told her that he would be fine; he’d have surgery (like I did), probably have chemotherapy (like I did), and come out OK (like I did).  I thought to myself, “well, if I survived, he can survive too, right?”

Sadly, I was wrong.  I didn’t realize just how aggressive stomach cancer is.  Alissa’s father lost his fight with cancer only two months after he was diagnosed.  It was a terrible experience for Alissa and her mother and brother to have to go through.  Without a second thought, I was there by her side as she had been there for me.  I drove up to Boston on a cold, blustery February day for her father’s funeral and burial, and then I went with all of her family to the reception afterwards at her parents’ house.  As Alissa was trying to introduce me to some of her cousins, she said, “and this is my friend Scott.  He’s a...he’s a sur...” and she couldn’t finish.  She couldn’t say that I was a survivor.  She broke down in tears...and I felt horrible.

That was the first time I experienced survivor’s guilt.  Survivor’s guilt is a real phenomenon that cancer survivors experience on multiple levels.  An article in the Fall 2010 edition of Cure Magazine looks at how survivor’s guilt can take many forms (the woman who finds out she is BRCA positive and is afraid she has passed it on to her daughter, the child who fears that all of the attention he received from his parents has torn apart his family), and how health care providers need to be attentive to the subtle cues that a survivor may be experiencing survivor’s guilt.

For me, it was no different.  It made no sense to me that I, a punk 22 year old kid with no job, no girlfriend, and no house, could survive cancer; yet Alissa’s father, who was a father, a husband, had a great job and was an all-around good guy, would lose his battle with cancer.  Where was the justice in that?

For the next year, I was in Boston frequently to be by her side.  If she needed to vent her anger and sadness about the loss of her dad, I would let her vent; if she needed a distraction from the void in her house and her life, we would go out and not talk about it.  In private, I too was grappling with my own feelings; there were times that I resented being a survivor because it didn’t make sense to me that I was still here and her dad wasn’t.  One day, as we were sitting in her house, and she was talking about how she missed her dad, I told her with all sincerity, “Alissa, if it could have been any other way, if I could have lost my battle so that your dad could still be here, I would want it that way.”  I wasn’t sure how she was going to take this; would she get upset at me for even thinking this way?  But she didn’t miss a beat, and she told me, “Well, maybe the reason why you survived was to help me deal with the loss of my dad.”

I had never looked at it that way, that maybe I was still here to help others who had gone through the cancer journey (regardless of the outcome).  That day, it was like a switch had been flipped on for me, that I could more clearly understand what it meant to be a survivor.  I credit Alissa with helping to define who I am today as a survivor, and the reason why I have chosen to help survivors, because of her honesty and understanding.

I still have flashes of survivor’s guilt when somebody close to me passes away from cancer.  Now, though, I have a clearer answer to the question, “Why did I survive?”

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