When the doctor tells you you have cancer, it does not seem real. I was shocked and in disbelief, not knowing what to think or how to feel. You look in the mirror. You force yourself to say the words, as if repetition makes it tangible, “...I have cancer.” …None of it makes any sense.
I am a cancer survivor. Well, I think... Hmm. I am a cancer... mitigator? Delayer of cancer? I am a cancer ...temporary reprieve-er.
I was diagnosed in April of 2010. Marginal zone, stage three, Non Hodgkins Lymphoma. Cancer. Too wide spread throughout my body to be cut out. After three and a half years of chemotherapy, my oncologist told me I am now in remission. Though mine is one that will come back. I will always worry about blood counts. I will always worry about other people being sick around me. So am I really "cured?" I do not have a good answer to that.
I do not like to dwell on my cancer. Not publicly anyway. Cancer is a downer. There is the nagging fear that I become a symbol of death and decay in people's eyes. I try to make people laugh. I like to help people feel empowered. To others it may seem I pretend my cancer does not exist. Good. I try. Maybe I do because others might think their problems are more manageable if they see me doing well. Maybe it's just because I do not like to acknowledge my mortality. I don't know why.
Shortly after I finished my first round of treatment I found the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. With my wife and family by my side, the LLS became my support group. They helped me through it all. It is not an easy thing to do, either. Just the emotional side of any diagnosis is brutal. The physical effects left me lying on the floor, unable to summon the energy to move, unable to even care. Sometimes even sobbing at the unknown and uncontrollable. That is EXACTLY what I want to spare others from. I hope that someday, this never happens. That cancer is forgotten. That modern medicine renders cancer not only completely treatable, but preventable. Cancer should be forgotten, a shadow of our past.
I have said before that if I could do any one thing in this life, I would like to hold people's hands to lift them when they have fallen. Encourage them. Remind them of the things in this world worth living for. That is the essence of what the LLS is for me. It champions taking action to end cancer. More than just cancer though, it is about helping others as it has helped me.
The Light The Night event is a night when literally thousands of people get together to do that. To rally together in support of all those ever touched by cancer. It is a night that helps us see that we are part of something great. A rising tide of human accomplishment fighting to end cancer. One of my personal heroes, Gordon Hinckley said, “I believe in the principle that I can make a difference in this world. It may be ever so small, but it will count for the greater good.”
I ask you to join with me. Help me fight cancer. Please make a donation to help fund the fight against cancer. Your support helps to fund groundbreaking research, patient support programs, education and awareness programs and more. Please give whatever you can to fight cancer. Use the tool on the right to make a donation. Or, because that donation tool does not show up on a mobilized version of this blog, you can go to my Light The Night page as well.
I thank you with all my heart.
Maybe I have tried to let go of cancer. As if distancing myself could lessing the fears and anxieties that crash upon the shoreline of my waking daily trudgery. Maybe… That imagery may be appropriate as the ocean smooths jagged rock, with undetected force lets the passing of time change the very shape of our world. Perhaps it just takes time to let go.
I've not posted anything in almost a year. It's been weird. Cancer becomes such an encompassing majority of your everyday. Even when I am remission and it seems to fade in my mind, I cannot get away from it. My mother recently gave us all a scare. Thrown into that wonder of uncertainty again, this time I wondered if it was her time. With it comes not knowing how to react. What to do or not do. How to feel. Or should I try to burry it all and not feel.
If these are to be her final hours, can I put aside my own ego and focus on her? Before too long she could go, leaving my father. My father. A man from whom I learn emotion is the opposite of weakness. As much as I feel the need to put aside my own insecurities for my mother, I need to do the same for my father. A man who may be lost without my mother.
I love them both. Neither should have to suffer, either in death or in struggling to live afterwards.
I have never said this enough. I love you. And if I could take a few more years of that hell called chemo dripped into our veins, just to take it from you, to give you a few more years, years without that same hell, a few more healthy years with Dad, with my kids as they grow, with me, …I would.
But it doesn't work that way. I can't make it work that way. And I am sorry.
My mother once asked me, as she felt she was doing well while her friend was losing her battle, how to treat that friend. How do I sit there [in chemo] and look at her knowing she will not make it and I will? How do I treat her? My answer is vastly different now. Though I feel my advice was sound, I lack my conviction and fortitude of only a couple years ago. Because now it is my mother who may not reach the finish for which we all hope.
Mom, what do I say when I look you in the face, knowing I made it and you will not?
…I don't know.
At the urging of a teammate, I am making this available for purchase. This was a "self portrait" I did for the first time I was an Honored Teammate for Team In Training. The original was poster board sized (18x24-ish) which is not economical to print.
What I am offering is two products.
- A single poster print, 11x17 sized, for $40 dollars.
- A set of 10 postcards, 5.5x8 -ish, whatever the standard large postcard size is, for $20.
The back of the postcards have this printed small on the bottom,
"W. Ryan Hatch was diagnosed with Stage 3, Marginal Zone Non Hodgkins
Lymphoma in 2010.He started running with Team In Training to help fight
cancer while going through treatment. Three and a half years later, he reached
remission. Now he runs with Team In Training to fight cancer for everyone.
GO TEAM!!"
You may order as many of each as you like though be aware of the logistics of printing. I pre-ordered a limited number of postcards and can re-order if they sell out and there is still enough demand. The posters will be ordered when I get enough orders to print at the same time.
If you would like to order, do the math for how many you want and donate to my Team In Training site using the donation tool on the right. For example, 3 posters (=$120) + 2 sets of postcards (=$40) would equal $160. Click on the donation tool, enter the total dollar amount and enter the number of posters and postcards in the memo. Make sure you add you email address in the donation process so I can contact you for the address to which you want them mailed.
So your memo might say "3 posters, 2 postcards. And you rock!" I will laugh at your comment, then send 3 posters and 20 postcards to the address after we email. Simple!
As always, I sincerely thank you all for your support in my fight, and helping me fight cancer for others as well.
...And you ROCK!
"How do you deal with the horrible guilt of knowing you are going to make it and someone else isn't?" was a question posed to me in the last few months. To be honest, there are very few people with whom I have been close that have gone through chemo. Well not that I know of. The closest of those I do know is my mother, who began her chemotherapy as I was ending mine. Only my Team In Training (TNT) teammate Lisa did not make it. As I thought about my answer, I thought of Lisa. I advised the person asking to find a common interest shared between the two and do that for the friend that will not make it. For Lisa, my teammate, I ran. In frustration I ran because that is what we shared. Both participants and fundraisers for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) while going through treatment, we connected through running and our TNT friends.
Now, six months after Lisa passed, I reconsider my response. April 21st 2014, I got my port removed. It was a very emotional day. At times I was elated. So happy that I could be done with that part of my life. Worried that it was all a delusion. That I would wake up still six months from being told I was in remission, and still not knowing if that day would ever come. Time seems to become an irregularity rather than a constant while going through chemo. Some days are blurry and you are not sure they really happen. Some days are fine.
The reality of time has set in and my port is out. I keep feeling my collarbone where I used to be able to feel the tube running from the port to the vein. A slight and squishable bump under the skin but on top of my left collarbone. My chest is still too tender for me to poke and prod though the place where the prongs from my port used to stick up is now only a yellowing bruise around the healing incision line. I kind of feel that part of me is missing like a soldiers amputated limb. Obviously different as I do not want it back; I do not miss it. Still, a part of me seems missing.
Monday, while very emotional, was a very happy day. The next day, April 22nd, my mother started another round of chemo. This one should not be as hard for her as her last round. Even though it is going to be more manageable this time, I still feel for her. And I wondered about that guilt. Worse, that same day my wife and I found out another friend of ours who has been struggling with her own fight, had gotten much worse. She just found out that her cancer had spread to her brain, liver, and a number of other organs. The following day, the 23rd, she passed. Once the cancer spreads, especially to major organs, there is little chance to make it.
I have been racked with guilt since. That I am better, even if my oncologist told me it will come back, and she did not make it. What right do I have to be better? She was married and had children too. She leaves behind a tormented spouse. She was a wonderful person.
How is that fair?
...Knowing full well what it would feel like, I would gladly take a few more years of treatment and suffering if it could let her live.
And I know it wouldn't work. But if- if.
So what can I do, because I cannot allow myself to do nothing. I run. I raise money to fund the research to end cancer. I want to go one step further than curing the disease. I want to prevent it. Team In Training and all the other programs that are a part of the LLS are trying to do the same. But I found solace in TNT. My teammates lift me and inspire me when I am weak or when I want to give up. My shoes are worn out. It hurts to run. I cannot afford to buy new ones right now but I still put on my shoes and run.
I think it is the only way I feel I am paying penance for getting better. I am trying to help pay for my making it when others have not.
I would dearly love for you to help as well. Please take a minute and donate to the LLS to help end cancer. I try to make it as easy as possible for you to do so. There is a donation tool on the side of my page. Just click and donate.
Thank you.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cancer, not to praise it.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Cancer...
It is time to take up arms against cancer once more. I am not asking for crazy amounts of donations, though I won't turn them away ;), I am only asking that all that read this donate a minimal $10 to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team In Training. All you need to do is click on the donation thingy on the right, and donate $10.
It's that simple!!
If you donate only $10, I will surpass my goal for this season in raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). Money raised by the LLS funds research on groundbreaking new treatments for ALL cancers, it supports patients that need help paying bills, it funds outreach programs... It fights cancer! Please take a moment, donate $10, and feel GREAT because you are helping to fight cancer!
That what Team In Training is all about. Fighting cancer! Well, fighting cancer and being awesome! Those are the two things TNT is all about. Okay, fighting cancer, being awesome, and sweating like crazy as we run and run and run. Those are the three thing TNT is all about. ...but nothing else.
Thank you for all your support.
I want to tell a little story about Cheryl, one of the Pac Crest Tri teammates this season (Summer 2014) with Team In Training. In my last season with TNT, I was still going through chemo, and trying to run as best as I could. Some days were great and some days you just can't make yourself do it very well.
As a team, we were running around University of Portland and I was beat. I do not remember how far we had to run that day, maybe 9 miles or something, but I was giving up. I was walking along the route as Cheryl caught up to me. I turned to try cheering her on when without saying anything she grabbed me hand and held on as she kept running. She literally started dragging me along with her. I groaned. I laughed a half laugh half cry, and started running again. I finished the miles that day, thanks to Cheryl. I would have let myself give in, walking back to the aid station then stopping. Because my teammates kept me going, I found the strength and determination to continue.
You may not know it, but there is such strength in you. Both individually and as a team, Team In Training or not. Do not ever doubt your efforts' efficacy. By your presence alone, you give such strength to others. You lift those that are fallen, you strengthen each other, and you drag us along to victory. I cannot thank you enough for all that you do.
Go Team!
Alright party people, and that means you, it’s time to FIGHT CANCER!!
“How?” you might ask. Easy enough. As I begin training to run another half marathon (13.1 miles), I am putting in the sweat and aches and pains and miles… All I ask of you is your sponsorship.
Tomorrow starts what I am calling “$10 Tuesdays!!” For the remaining Tuesdays in February, I ask that all my Facebook friends donate a measly $10 to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through my fundraising page
http://pages.teamintraining.org/oswim/anchor14/wryanhatch.
IT’S THAT SIMPLE!! If all of my friends will do this, I will pass my goal for this season. But I promise not to stop there. I have other fundraising ideas and projects because I have been in the chemo chair and I have seen those in the chairs around me. I feel more than lucky to have come out the other side and have made a life goal to help others do the same.
The money raised goes toward finding more cures, more effective medicine, and letting loved ones live another day with their family and friend.
If your heart is so full and you have the means, please feel free to donate more than the $10 I am asking for at this time. If everyone donated just $20, I would double my goal. If your heart is full and you do not have the means, please do what you can even if that is just passing this invite and my fundraising page or my blog along.
With all my heart, I thank you for your support.
-Ryan
