Sitting across the table from a friend, casually drinking coffee, I found myself explaining the reason I had several operations as a child. Quite nonchalantly and without so much as a momentary pause for a breath, I mentioned that I had cancer. He interrupted with a sympathetic comment, and I quickly pushed through the story, brushing off his attempt to comfort me. Perhaps if I could rush through the story, it would mask the fact that I was overtly trying to minimize or downplay my experience. I felt uncomfortable. But why?
Later, once I was back home, I reflected upon that interaction. Was it that I was uncomfortable being vulnerable? Unlikely. I have shared that same story many times. And I have always been open and honest, nearly to a fault. I did not know this friend well, so it is not as if he had hurt me in any way in the past to cause me to feel guarded. So why did I feel such discomfort in that moment? This was not the first time I had experienced this same visceral urge to brush aside another person’s attempt at sympathy or empathy upon hearing I had cancer. This was a pattern. Suddenly I recognized why.
It is classic imposter syndrome, with a helping of survivor guilt thrown in for good measure. Although I have had a lot of surgery and more screening, testing, and biopsies than I can keep track of over the years, I never had chemo or lost my hair or had any of the typical untoward side effects from chemo, radiation, or hormonal or immunologic therapies. I felt like a fraud, as if I was not really a true cancer survivor. And even if I used the term survivor to describe myself, I felt I was not the same as another who had experienced “more.”
However, there was something even deeper going on in my psyche than mere imposter syndrome and survivor guilt. It was the knowledge that cancer was actually one of the better things that happened to me. This is not only because it led me to my career in medicine. It is because many of the events that followed that time in my life were far more harmful, painful, and dark than my experience of cancer had been. It is as if my discomfort was really signaling that my friend, or anyone else for that matter, should not waste their sympathy on my cancer story, because the story that remained untold was far more sinister. But I scarcely processed those thoughts in that moment, let alone thought to tell my friend to reserve his sympathy.
That said, I can honestly say to either a friend or stranger, that there is no need for sympathy at all. Not for cancer. Not for any of the other sad or scary moments of this story. For every one of those events ultimately leads to a larger purpose. Now while I believe there is something to be said for reframing hardships in a positive light, it would be inauthentic to sugar-coat those events. It is by living through the darkness that we gain deeper gratitude for the light. So instead of dismissing the pain of certain life events, I have acknowledged it. I have owned it. I have sat with it. I have cried, grieved, processed, laughed at times, and healed (or continue to heal) from it. And after I allowed it to become part of my identity, I regarded those things on the spectrum of interesting things. So while it might sound flippant to refer to such a huge part of my identity as the least interesting thing, it underscores that cancer is only one layer of a multifaceted story of adversity and resilience.
The Least Interesting Thing 