How I scored gold in the Cancer Olympics
And how some people don’t seem to realize this competition is a two-way street.
Above: Me on my final day of four cycles of chemotherapy for a Stage IIb seminoma, July 29, 2022. I have been cancer free since then.
“You’re handling this so well!”
That’s what my friends and family kept telling me throughout my Summer of Cancer.
They marveled as I dutifully performed the role of the stoic, uncomplaing cancer patient. I weathered four increasingly grueling cycles of chemotherapy for testicular cancer—all while reporting about the monkeypox outbreak, waging a one-man war against misinformation about the virus on Twitter and raising tens of thousands of dollars for an HIV charity event.
“You’re handling this so well!” everyone said as I endured hair loss, nausea, chemo brain, Covid, Covid rebound, migraines, shingles, heartburn, dizziness, fluid retention, insomnia, bloating, gum sores, constipation, a tremor, a foul taste in my mouth, neuropathy, fatigue and unless I’m forgetting something, forgetfulness.
Perhaps chemo threw me off course. Because after my cancer returned in April 2022 (my first go-round, only requiring surgery to replace my left gonad with a prosthesis, was in December 2021), I had been adamant that I wouldn’t fall into the cancer-patient cliché promulgated by beaming celebrities on the cover of People magazine.
Headline: Ben Ryan’s Brave Fight Against Cancer!
A cynic, I knew even before my diagnosis I belonged to the Barbara Ehrenreich School of Cancer. In her writing, the now-late cultural critic eviscerated the cancer industrial complex, which, she observed, dupes people into believing that if they approach malignancy with anything but an all-American frisky optimism, they doom themselves to death. In an email announcing my cancer recurrence to my loved ones, I forbade “any suggestion that I am required to maintain a sunny disposition and a positive attitude to ensure I survive this cancer.”
So how did I wind up winning a gold medal in the Cancer Olympics nevertheless?
I could blame the ascetic discipline I inherited from a long line of grim-faced, puritanical workhorse ancestors. My father, a surgeon, has claimed, plausibly, that he “never missed a day of school or work” in his life. He worked so much, always without complaint, that we rarely saw him. My late mother, a teacher and academic, never stopped being productive. She watched one hour of TV per week: Masterpiece Theater, during which she would multitask by brushing the dog.
So even with an IV dripping poison into me, I was more interested in conducting interviews—“If you hear a beeping, I apologize, but I’m having chemo, and that’s the IV going off,” I’d inform my interviewees—and banging out news articles than acquiescing to malignant malaise. I only stopped working for one week: my last day of chemo plus the subsequent six days, when I was so all-consumingly ill, I could not do anything but just wait for each minute to pass. What does this eighth circle of chemo toxicity feel like? It’s like being possessed, but the exorcist has you on a waiting list.
I was confounded by how consistently and constantly people appraised my performance. (“You’re handling this so well!”) This got me pondering the alternative. What if I’d performed objectionably?
Imagine this sneering exchange behind my back:
“We need to talk about Ben Ryan.”
“Yes, and how incorrectly he’s doing cancer.”
“He’s morose and irritable.”
“The nerve!”
Here’s the thing: Little did everyone know, but I was keeping meticulous score of their performance—in the Friends and Family of a Cancer Patient Olympics. I regretfully had experience in this territory, having seen both the apex and dredges of humanity when my mother died of a malignant brain tumor when I was in college. I watched as friends I’d held dear for years beat a hasty retreat upon the news of my mother’s terminal diagnosis. So I knew that while some people race for the gold in the face of someone else’s cancer, others never even show up to the meet.
Yes, it’s an egregious character flaw on my part, but I can’t help but keep score. I come from a family of WASPs so rigid and beholden to arcane customs, it’s commonplace to learn an aunt has been bearing a grudge for months over the failure to send a thank-you note.
“You were raised to live in the Eisenhower era,” a psychologist once told me.
The Cancer Olympics scoring system works rather like a horse race. A disparity between the expected and actual performance yields the biggest win—or loss. So a top score went to a guy I know only slightly—a dancer who as a teen did a stint in the boy band Menudo—who dutifully helped me out in my apartment during my most harrowing chemo days.
Just as when my mom died, the lowest scores went to those I knew best who showed up the least—or not at all.
Take Dave*, a pretty good friend I’d known for a decade. After never offering to visit following my surgery, he finally came to dinner six weeks later. An hour passed before he even asked after my health, only to snicker over the fact that I’d had surgery on my genitals.
(*Names have not been changed so as not to shield the guilty.)
I flew into a rage. He apologized. And didn’t speak to me for almost a year. Then he got back in touch over email and apologized. I accepted his apology and forgave him. He asked how things had been for me. I spent an hour typing a response, going into exacting and perhaps excruciating detail about all he’d missed.
I never heard from him again.
Then there was Sean, who I’d known for six years. We’d been close, but had drifted apart. Still, after he left New York for Harvard Law School, we maintained a jocular texting correspondence. He returned to town over the summer while I was in chemo. We texted for a few weeks, with no sign of trouble on the horizon.
And then Sean ghosted me. For good.
In sum, people like Dave and Sean most definitely did not stick the landing in their Cancer Olympics arena.
And yes, people commonly bolt in the face of someone else’s cancer, supposedly because, to quote Moonstruck, they fear death. But that doesn’t make the loss of friendship and support in a time of desperate need—one made no less wanting of such support by my uncomplaining disposition—any less of a dagger to the heart.
Below: Me, much recovered, April 22, 2022
This was really interesting, well written & compelling. I think, though, you may have been expecting people to navigate an awkward situation (a friend’s pain and mortality, a friend’s mother’s fatal illness) with an acumen most people don’t possess. The fact that their awkwardness totally pales beside the magnitude of what you went through doesn’t mean that they knew what to do (or could be expected to know what to do) and just failed to do it.
You didn’t want them to avoid you and you didn’t want them to praise your perseverance. Perhaps your friend’s “snicker” about the surgery on your genitals was an attempt to banter back & forth with black humor?
It must be awful to feel deserted at such painful & vulnerable time. This is probably little consolation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their egregious behavior had less to do with fear of death and more to do with awkwardness. Not knowing what to do and feeling intensely self-conscious is often the source of people avoiding others. That’s no excuse, but it is a sad reality.
Anyway — really interesting post. I look forward to reading more of your stuff.
Possibly the best thing I've read on social reactions to the big C 👌