Living With Uncertainty

Uncertainty comes in many flavors. There’s the kind of uncertainty we choose, when we start a new business, relocate, decide to climb a mountain, or take on any other voluntary adventure. Then there’s the kind of uncertainty that comes with events that are involuntary, but not life-threatening: losing a job, getting divorced, or having your house burn down when you’re away, just to name a few. There’s the kind of uncertainty that is terrifying but short-lived, as when you’re caught in a flood, earthquake, face to face with armed criminals, or skidding off a highway on an icy night. Horrifying and life-threatening in the moment. But if you manage to live through it, life will most likely regain its normal level of stability and certainty again.
But then there’s the type of uncertainty that is visceral, cellular, life-threatening and chronic—the kind of uncertainty that hits when we’re told we have a life-threatening disease or condition that we may have to live with for the rest of our lives. 
I spent a very rewarding hour today interviewing a woman who, just a year ago, at the age of 44, was told she had a rare form of multiple myeloma—a type of bone marrow cancer that usually develops in African American men over the age of 60. She underwent chemo, to get her marrow “clean,” and then doctors harvested enough of her “clean” marrow to give her a bone marrow transplant with her own bone marrow. The process is, to put it lightly, not fun. The advantage to that approach is that you don’t reject your own bone marrow. The disadvantage is, the marrow you receive is not 100% clean. There’s a trace of cancer protein still in the marrow. Which means you’re not cured. You live with the cancer, which hopefully stays present, but under control.
That’s not just living with the esoteric possibility of a recurrence. That’s living with cancer daily, and watching to see if or when it goes out of control again.
So, for starters, let me not complain about a single point of uncertainty in my blessed and healthy life.
But the woman was so upbeat, so matter-of-fact about her illness, that I began asking her how she lived with that level of uncertainty so apparently well.
“I don’t think of it like that,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and cried ‘poor pitiful me.’ When something like that actually happens to you, you just kind of go into survival mode, and say, ‘okay, that’s what the deal is, let’s do this. Let’s get it taken care of.'”
Which is, I suppose, more reinforcement of the idea that we cope with uncertainty and adversity far better than we fear we will, when we’re actually in the middle of it. Humans are amazing, when it comes to prioritizing and focusing for survival. Might be why we’ve been around as long as we have.
But the woman went on beyond just survival tactics. “I say it’s been joyful, and people don’t understand what I mean,” she said with a smile in her voice. “But amazing things have happened, along the way, to give me what I needed, when I needed it. I’m very thankful for that. When they came to give me those injections (the heavy chemo, in two doses, that provoked violent illness, in preparation for the transplant), it’s true, that nobody else could walk that walk for me. That part you do alone. There are trials, and it’s a bumpy road. But there are so many things you learn along the way.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“The best thing for me,” she said, “was it made me stop and realize all the stuff I thought was important but isn’t important. I look at people now who stress out over that daily stuff that isn’t important and I say, ‘I hope I wasn’t like that!’ But I don’t take anything for granted now. Relationships are so much more important. That’s what matters. When I was trapped in that hospital room (for weeks after the transplant), my survival was talking to everyone who came in that room. You’re too tired to read or watch TV, but I talked to everyone and found out all kind of things about their lives. And I’d look outside, at the hospital rose garden, and realize how beautiful nature was. The beauty of the earth is so much more interesting and important to me, now.
“I also learned a lot of survival skills. One day, I spent a whole morning stressing about whether I was running a fever, because that could mean infection, and I finally realized all I had to do was buy a thermometer, and I could know the answer and stop worrying. I learned to ask myself ‘what’s the common sense thing I can do here to stop the fear or worry?'”
Just like any epic hero on a transformative journey, she found magical guides to help her on her way, including a prescient clerk at the drug store cosmetic counter who, unasked, convinced her to see a doctor and get lab work done, which led to her diagnosis. And like any epic hero, she has gained strength from the trials and learning.
“I have two kids who are 19 and 20 now,” she said. “But I went on a bike trip with my sister and some other women, before I got sick,” she said, “and being with those women, back on my own, I remembered that I WAS an adventurous person once. But that person got kind of lost, in being a wife and mother. On that trip, I realized that there is life after being a mom.
“I think this cancer is just another thing on the journey of me becoming a strong and independent woman,” she concluded.
The journey, with all of its trials, will continue for her. The transplant went well, and she’s healthy and clean, almost a year later. And while uncertainty is now a constant companion, so is a kind of strength and wisdom she is now able to pass on to others.
“When I go back for my appointments now, my sister goes with me, and we meet people at the hospital who are in different stages of the disease. And she can talk to them, and I can talk to them, and it takes away some of their anxiety,” she says.
Everyone deals with the challenges and uncertainties in life differently. And some challenges are more daunting than others. But I hung up the phone knowing I had crossed paths, if ever so briefly, with a woman who possessed the strength and wisdom of a true epic hero. A woman who had learned, in her journeys, how to not only survive uncertainty but how to live with it, with grace, courage, gratitude, and joy.
 
Lane Wallace is the Editor and Founder of No Map. No Guide. No Limits.