It's Not the Heat, it's the Humidity

Cancer as a young adult

I thought about writing this every day for the past 963 days.

Sometimes I thought about it at midnight, while the noises of the hospital lulled me into a catatonic state or while I lined up in sub-zero temperatures just to pay $10 to get into a local bar (which goes against my whole personal philosophy).

I thought about it on each birthday and on each MRI scanning table and on each bad Sunday kneeling on a pew.

I thought about it with tubes coming out of my abdomen and with a bell ringing in one hand and a champagne flute in the other.

I thought about it at the tiny church on those rocks in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and at the grocery store shopping for those massive surgical band-aids.

I thought about it when I was handed my first nephew and when I was handed the “Fertility” pamphlet by that breezy lady in the stuffy doctor’s office.

I thought about it when I got it, got rid of it, and got it again.

Long story short, I thought about it.

I spent 963 days wondering if I should write about my cancer.

I debated if I should make it fun, like a Friends episode titled “The One Where I get Cancer”, or if I needed to take the serious route, like an article that reads like a non-peer reviewed, poorly explained medical journal. I even had a dedicated page in my journal titled “Cancer: What I Would Write About if I Was Going to Write About it” that I opened only when a memory pressed hard enough on my brain.

I’m not quite sure what was stopping me. Potentially my incessant need to control a narrative or my lifelong allergy to vulnerability. Maybe the fact that cancer, although ubiquitous in all forms of media and in real life, is a deeply unique experience that no one person can successfully capture. It even could’ve been that writing it out is admitting it’s really happening. But I’m pretty sure it came down to the fact that I wasn’t quite sure how to explain it–all of it and any of it.

Whatever the reason, I think I got it now.

In the Midwest we say “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” The heat isn’t causing the frizzy hair or sweat behind the knees or general discomfort. It’s not the heat that makes it real, it’s the humidity, as if it’s some unseen force to reckon with. It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity that’ll get you. Can I explain the difference? No, but I can feel it.

It’s not the test results, it’s the shaky hands fumbling your patient portal password.

It’s not swallowing pills, it’s the 20 minutes waiting for them to react within your body.

It’s not the hospital rooms, it’s the waiting rooms.

It’s not the IV prick, it’s the nurse telling you to look away as it’s injected.

It’s not the scars, it’s accidentally glancing at their foreign pattern in a foggy mirror.

It’s not nostalgia for your previous life, it’s grief for the one you wanted.

It’s not the people who have left through your door or the people who never come through it, it’s the person sitting with you as you watch it open and shut.

It’s not the messages of support, it’s your mom offering to sleep in your bed on the tough nights.

It’s not the tears, it’s crying in your room, crying before work calls, crying in the Portillo’s parking lot, crying in the gym locker room, crying with your parents, crying with your dentist, crying with the random ladies on airplanes after just having cried in the airplane bathroom, crying when you’ve never actually been a crier- it’s just crying.

It’s not trying to walk again, it’s striking a pose in a medical gown, dancing in a pub basement a thousand miles from home and also in your living room, and laughing across the curtain of the hospital room with the stranger who is now your roommate and friend, even if just for this week.

It’s not the survivorship mantras, it’s the times you scream this fucking sucks.

It’s not the rarity of the disease, it’s the isolation of experiencing it.

It’s not the nightmares, it’s the dreams of before.

It’s not losing hope, it’s finding faith.

It’s not the unruly, multiplying cells, it’s the fact they’re made up of you.

It’s not the direness of this life, it’s the freedom of it.

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.