That time I was in SELF...

Several months ago I was standing in Jet’s pizza on a Friday night trying to convince the cashier to use my coupon that I had accidentally left on the counter when the phone rang.  I saw that it was a Nashville number so I politely excused myself from the coupon convo and walked outside.  The sweet young voice on the other end was a girl from the PR department at Vandy who asked if I’d ever heard of a magazine called SELF.  

She went on to explain that SELF had talked with some of the doctors at Vandy and they were looking for stories for their October issue on women in cancer.  The focus has typically been about breast cancer but this year they wanted to look at other cancers that women get and focus on precision medicine.  She asked if it was true that I had benefitted from precision medicine and if would be willing to speak with them.  I agreed.  She explained that my story would have to be chosen so they may or may not call but needed my permission to give them my name.  I asked if she knew my story and when she said no, I gave her the 3 minute elevator version.  This resulted in her silence and I kind of felt bad because she probably just had a piece of paper with a list of names to call for permission and she may or may not have been an intern. After all, it WAS after 6:00 on a Friday night.  I thanked her for calling and assured her I was doing well, thanks to her kind friends at Vandy, but I would be doing better if this pizza guy would give me a discount.  

Several weeks went by and I had heard nothing so I figured either I scared the girl or they had all the stories they needed.  Then, on my way back from our last scan appointment in July I checked my email and there was this one:

Hi Kimberly,

I’m Kristin Canning, a writer for SELF Magazine. I’m working on real women stories for our October cancer package, and you were referred to my editors by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. I’d love to interview you about your experience and treatments for melanoma. Would you be able to talk on the phone sometime early this week? Looking forward to hearing from you!

Thank you,

Kristin Canning

Editorial Assistant | SELF

Condé Nast | 1 World Trade Center| 37th floor

New York, NY 10007 | 212.286.3418

It looked pretty official to me.  Stephen was driving and playing “name the 80’s song.”  I told him that I couldn’t talk because I was busy responding to SELF magazine.  We set up a phone interview for the next day.  I left a work meeting early with a strategic plan to drive far enough outside of downtown Memphis to find a safe parking lot to sit in before the phone rang.  I’m sure that’s what most famous people do.  I think I ended up at Old Navy.  

So the phone did ring and I talked to Ms. Kristin for about an hour about what went down in my life since that day in December.  I gave her the fairly long synopsis of the last nearly five years and just when she thought I was finished, I would give her another dramatic detail.  There was lots of “hmm, I see..” from her and “How did you feel when the treatment didn’t work?” to which most of the answers were either kind of self-explanatory or “like I was going to die” and I started running out of adjectives.  I left out the squamous cell nose job incident because I felt like she had plenty of material.  Somewhere near the end of the hour I looked down at my scrub pants and my steering wheel and it hit me that I was sitting in my car in a parking lot recounting details of my life that I will always wish didn’t exist to a perfect stranger in New York City on Eastern time.   She had no idea how very ordinary I was and I was pretty sure that I was not magazine material.  In an effort to explain this I blurted out, “Look, I live the most normal kind of life.  Most people don’t know what I’ve been through and I don’t walk around telling them unless they ask.  I just try to live my life, to be a mom, a wife, and do my job.”  A few minutes later, we hung up and she said she’d get back with me.  I asked if she was actually planning on publishing this and she said, “Oh yes, it will go in the October issue.”  So that was that. 

I kind of wondered what she was thinking after we hung up.  I was thinking that I was exhausted and that I’m a lot better in writing than on the phone.  She had asked me if I made any lifestyle changes after being diagnosed with cancer.  I wanted to come up with something very profound and health-conscious-like such as only eating the seeds of Mexican turnip because you know, SELF magazine and all.  But I just said, “Not really - I was not unhealthy to begin with - this came out of nowhere,” and had the vision of me walking my dog in my pajamas the night before.  I’m not sure why they didn’t put me on the cover.  

When I got home, Stephen asked how it went and I told him that I had no idea what I said.  He then proceeded to tell me how he had told my story to someone on the phone that day and the guy asked if I was bed-ridden.  I got nervous about Ms. Kristin's mental image of me as she wrote my article so I panic emailed her a family picture, just to prove that I was upright, functional, and not overweight or whatever and that we all looked reasonably happy.  She complimented me on my beautiful people and asked if she could use the photo.  

There were a series of emails back and forth between Kristin and me and then another lady named Pat who had to “check the facts.”  In this series of emails I learned a lot about deadlines, and editors and fact checking, but mostly that anyone who hasn’t experienced cancer has no clue.  They did send me questions for clarification (see below) which I certainly clarified.  I was pretty sure by the fact that they kind of got some of the info mixed up and with the tight deadline, it may not be the most accurate.  I also learned that the online version would be written in my own voice so I saw this as an opportunity and I edited rewrote that one too.  Either way, the story would be shared and someone needed to read it.  I would have paid good money for a story like this five years when I couldn’t find one soul worse off than me that lived to tell about it.  

The online version came out on my birthday.  Some people would call that irony but I call it God’s timing.  There could not have been a better reminder of the gift of life.  Stephen was the first to find it, of course, and texted it to me.  I saw the word, “lethal” and I was scared to read it.  As I read it, I found myself crying for whoever that girl was, remembering that girl was me, thanking God that I was that girl, and then I went back to work.  The online article was almost exactly what I had sent them.  I was pretty pleased that they left the word “faith.”  Five letters can speak volumes.  Happy Birthday.  Stick a candle in that. 

The print version came out the next week with Jessica Alba wearing a swimsuit on the cover and it still makes me laugh.  Me. Her. Basically twins.  We watched as the article was shared over and over on Facebook by our friends, on MSN.com, and on Vanderbilt Cancer Center’s page.  It was tweeted and favorited and shared by all sorts of random people.  There were more kind words than I’ve ever been worthy of...all very cool, but a little weird.  And, the picture.  We could not have been more Southern if we tried - standing in a cotton field holding some dogs.  

I guess any fear I had in putting myself out there has pretty much diminished.  So much for flying under the radar.  I also realized that is when it’s your story and you’ve lived it, you are very protective of the details.  They matter.  I’ve written things over and over about my experiences but in the hands of a stranger, my control was released to their interpretation.  As I answered those questions, the details came flooding back, like the one about “setbacks.”  I thought about the day that I literally could not balance to put my daughter’s smocked dress on her for church.  Definitely a setback.  I thought about the moment that four somber-faced doctors walked in and I could read what they were thinking.  I thought about the day I told my crying son that I’d be back later that day, knowing I probably wouldn’t.  But, it’s a magazine article - nobody needs to read that. The bottom line is that somebody will pick that up in the grocery store or search for positive melanoma stories on the internet and my face will pop up - smiling and holding a dog.  They will need to hear what it says because it will give them hope.  It may only contain part of the story and we all know the whole, but the end result is good and for those that believe, there will be no doubt how God showed up. 

Next month there will be a new magazine with new articles and another gorgeous cover model.  My copy will probably go on a shelf to collect some dust, and I’ll save it to show my kids one day.  They know about it now but are seriously unimpressed which is just fine with me.  I certainly don’t consider being in SELF magazine my greatest accomplishment.  They are.  And they know it. 

KJ

Link to the SELF online article

*My clarification from SELF.  Note that they call questions "queries" which is probably in a Fancy Nancy book and that means they are important.  Also note that I was proud of my fancy colored ink but was supposed to use ALL CAPs.  I apologized for this because I was working on our fifth grade project at the same time I answered the queries.

QUERIES FROM SELF: ( If you could use CAPS, that helps distinguish your answers from the original query, thanks!)

1) Correct spelling? Kimberly Jessop  yes

2) You will be 37 as of October 1, 2015?  No, I turn 38 in September

3) Correct that in 2010 (which month was it?)  your husband pointed out a small cyst on your back? December 2010. Yes.

4) And you thought it was nothing, but still made an appointment with your dermatologist?  Well, sort of.  He made the appointment for me because he’s a worrier which I can also credit for my survival.  But, yes, I went that day, thinking it was just a cyst and hoping it was nothing. 

5) When the biopsy turned up stage 4 melanoma would it be fair to say you were dumbfounded? That’s fair.  Blindsided, dumbfounded, shocked, devastated...

6) After the Interleukin-2 treatment, you  started a two-year, PD-1 inhibitor immunotherapy infusion clinical trial? Yes, I failed IL2 and started the 2 year clinical trial.

7) You wold drive three hours to Vanderbilt then drive back, continuing to work and take care of our family? yes.  Friends and my husband helped with drop off and pickup and meals on the days I had treatments because I was usually gone about 18 hours. 

8) And your children were  2 and 5 years old at the time? yes (10 and 7 now!)  

9) You did the PD-1 immunotherapy for nine months; things seemed to be going well, but you had to wait until your first scan to be sure? I was on an 8 week cycle which meant that I was scanned for the first time after 8 weeks and every 8 weeks thereafter.  So for the first 2 months, I had no clue if it was working or not.  My first scans showed some shrinking so it was definitely positive.

10)  When your doctor called on your drive home and told you that your tumors were getting smaller, you screamed with joy? sure did.  Well, I waited until I hung up the phone, because you know, not to appear too crazy.  And, it’s a guarded kind of joy - everything is with cancer.  You are elated with any positive progress but guarded in how long the progress will last.  Always.  It is still this way. Four years and 8 months later.  Every time I walk out of a clear scan I know I’m not home free, just grateful that God gave me more days.  

11) Being away from your family for treatment makes you wonder if what you’re doing is worth it? Never. It was always hard to leave my kids even for a day, but I would go to the end of the earth and back if that gave me one more day with my husband and kids.  Have you seen them?  If those faces don’t give you a reason to live, I’m not sure what would.  

12) You did have a couple of setbacks, the worst being diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia?  No.  The pivotal moment was when the cancer had spread to my spine and paralyzed me.  I knew and we all knew that if I lived it would be a miracle.  I envisioned trying to care for my children in a wheelchair and knew that my career where I basically teach people to walk was pretty much over.  I don’t like to depend on others so this was devastating.  The neurosurgeon that did my surgery did not know the damage to my spinal cord that had been done and could not promise that I would walk normally again but it would buy me some time and relieve the pain.  I remember telling God that if I survived this, He could use me for whatever He wanted.  I woke up from surgery and felt my toes for the first time in a couple of months and I haven’t stopped since.  (Last week I ran a 5K and got 2nd in my age group.  It happened to be the 5K for the Melanoma Research Foundation that my husband and I brought to Memphis and hosted for the first time this year.  We raised 42K for melanoma research - not too shabby for a first year).  The CML was a complete sideshow.  Yes, it’s cancer.  Bad cancer.  I was diagnosed with that about 6 months after my spinal tumor.  I had spent 6 months trying to figure out how to walk again, so when they told me there was a drug for that, I figured the odds were a lot better than stage 4 melanoma.  If God had brought me this far, He wasn’t about to fail me now.  The biggest issue with getting another cancer while you are on a research drug is that you can no longer take the drug. So, I was basically left with no options to treat my melanoma tumors that were still there, but had no choice but to treat the CML.  It was a very wait and see approach which also required a lot of faith.  

13) As you explained to Kristin, at this point, you and your husband weren’t fazed by bad news — if cancer taught you anything, it’s that until everyone tells you there are no options, there are options? Oh we were fazed but the blow on the second cancer seems a lot softer, I guess.  (And the third is even less - I was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma last year on my nose.  Surgery took care of that one.) As a dear friend of mine says, you choose to “bow up or fold up” and I will always bow up.  We were certainly numb that day, and probably in shock because who in the world does that happen to? But again, I was given 3 drug choices that are FDA approved to treat the CML.  I hate poking, prodding.  Bone marrow biopsies are horrible.  Taking chemo pills for the rest of my life is not convenient, but cancer is not convenient.  And, yes.  I am not big on taking no for an answer.  We will always look for options.  The beautiful thing is that melanoma treatment has advanced so much that now there are actually options.  

 14) Since February of 2013, you’ve been in remission for both  melanoma and leukemia and I feel so lucky.  Ha!  Lucky is what happens when you win the lottery.  I won way more than that.  I won life.  I get to hold my children, watch them grow, pick them up from school, and tuck them in at night.  I get to spend my days helping others and doing what I love.  I get to celebrate anniversaries with my husband and hold his hand as I share this life with him.  I’m not lucky.  I’m honored.  I believe that it is all God’s plan and I believe in miracles.  I am not sure why He chose me for one, but I am grateful.

What thirty-eight looks like...

Thirty-eight does not fall in the milestone category like 30 and 40 and whatnot.  It’s a lost-in-the-middle kind of number - past 35 so you round up to 40, and shoot, well over 30.  We live life by fives and tens and the others just get lost in the middle.  But, thirty-eight for me is pretty significant - 20 years since I graduated high school, 15 years at my job, 10 years of motherhood, and 5 years since I first shook hands with cancer.  Plus, I’m never lacking for things to celebrate - I’ll just make stuff up. 

At thirty-eight, life seems to have brought me to a place where age and circumstance intertwine.  We all have something in common - our kids, our work, our past experiences.  We’ve moved past the intimidation of who’s older or younger and just see each other for who we are - or at least I do.  It’s really cool.    

Every year brings challenges, victories, defeat, and this year is no exception.  I find my prayer list longer and thicker with needs - illnesses that we thought only older people face, challenges that are reserved for “grown-ups” and then I realized I’m supposed to be a grown-up.  Somedays I long for that little two-bedroom house that we first put all the money we had in only because that’s before life got real big and messy.  But, then I realize that messy is sometimes beautiful and real and very much the glue that binds us all together.  Messy is rich with friendships and Friday night pizza, laughing and crying our way through life’s celebrations and heartaches.  

At thirty-eight, life has sure brought me to a place that was no where in my dreams, but part of it is better than what I could have dreamed.  So many times, my tendency is to say, “no, thank you” and go about my business, but thirty-eight has taught me “yes” because sometimes even though “yes” is not very comfortable, it’s the right thing.  So, this year, I decided to list 38 yeses - in no particular order:

1. Yes to cake.  My mom used to make me a chocolate sheet cake with homemade icing every year on my birthday.  This year, my aunt walked through my door with the same cake, tied up with a purple fluffy bow - yes, just yes to that.
2. Yes to spandex.  It helps with holding the things in that are poking out at thirty-eight.
3. Yes to lunch.  With friends, with your kids - even if I have to totally rearrange my day and spend an hour in a noisy elementary school cafeteria, I never regret it.
4. Yes to fear.  Facing it is harder than knowing you have it, but you will either determine that it was not as bad as you thought or much harder than you thought and both will be gratifying. 
5. Yes to fairies, fairy gardens, fairy dust, and gnomes.  They are tiny and cute and I am fueling a limitless imagination. 
6. Yes to meal sign-ups.  You can’t fix cancer, tragedy, or death, and you may not know what to say but everybody needs to eat.
7. Yes to jewelry.  I can wear solid colors the rest of my life and no one will notice.
8. Yes to an emergency stash.  Of chocolate, wine, coffee, wet-wipes, or whatever it takes to get through it.
9. Yes to the puppy.  He will weasel his way into your bed, your heart, and bring endless joy for your kids, even if he poops on the rug.
10. Yes to the kitchen table.  For homework, for family dinner, for art, for the piles of junk, and for all the dips that will start conversations that always end in side-splitting, cheek-holding laughter.
11. Yes to music.  Two of the four people in this house find their groove in music.  One claims that “her brain just plays music like a radio.”  I’ve learned to embrace it and sometimes use my galley kitchen as a dance floor. Sometimes.
12. Yes to the Big Green Egg.  It has saved me countless hours in the kitchen cooking meat and brought many people to my table.
13. Yes to child meal planning.  Taco Tuesday and Waffle Wednesday will be a big hit and the guesswork is removed every week.
14. Yes to humor.  Life’s not always funny, but it is.  And, you can find humor in the hardest places if you look for it.
15. Yes to play.  The kind that’s free and unstructured. I spend my life teaching and encouraging play skills for children with different abilities and their families.  There is no greater joy than watching my own fling off their backpacks and run free in the backyard. 
16. Yes to the littlest giver or gift.  For my birthday, I got sandbox cupcakes with stick candles made by toddler daycare friends, a birthday book made by my own little bitty artist, and a chocolate cupcake presented by a crying toddler because she really wanted to eat it.  All small but all big.
17. Yes to interviews.  The story was lived to be told.  
18. Yes to Tervis Tumblers.  They keep drinks cold and don’t leave those pesky rings that you see after it’s too late and the plastic cup is sitting in a puddle on your grandmother’s table.  
19. Yes to sporting events.  I’ve never watched one play of any NFL, MLB, or college football game, even though all of my vacations have been centered around stadiums.  I love watching my son play and sitting by my husband.  My people watching skills have sharpened and even bad nachos are good.
20. Yes to Bible verses.  I had no idea when I memorized them as a child how often my brain would recall them to bring me peace and help me look forward.  
21. Yes to thank-you.  Sometimes that’s all that’s needed - not score-keeping, not returned favors, just simple acknowledgement of kindness and good.  
22. Yes to survival data surveys.  Yes, I’m still alive.  Go ahead and extend the bar graph.
23. Yes to service.  Sometimes you don’t have talent or money to give but serving others in whatever capacity is a gift for the people you serve, for yourself, and for your children who are taking notes.
24. Yes to the consent form to use my extra blood for research.  It’s one more way I can help.
25. Yes to your gut.  It usually steers you right.
26. Yes to candles.  Especially trick candles.  I believe in making wishes and trick ones let you do this over and over.  Plus, the ten-year-old boy will really get a kick out of this.  My birthday cake came with three to celebrate past, present, and future.  What more do you really need? 
27. Yes to reading glasses.  It beats squinting and who are we kidding?
28. Yes to books.  It’s hard to find the time but good ones are such an escape.  Same goes for magazines.
29. Yes to Sundays.  For worship, fellowship, and family, and to sit down for a few minutes without feeling guilty.
30. Yes to stopping to smell the roses.  Or reading all the iris labels in the garden, touring the caboose, picking the blueberries, looking at the sunflowers, standing on the porch of Elvis’s birthplace - even though it wasn’t planned, you’ve got time and you’re teaching them something. 
31. Yes to art.  Especially kid art.  It’s one of the freest forms of self-expression and allows us to interpret the world through someone else’s eyes.  Glitter is optional.
32. Yes to coffee.  No explanation needed. 
33. Yes to the experience.  There will be a story later and it will be fun to tell.
34. Yes to Girl Scout cookies.  They are overpriced but delicious and some mom has to meet her quota of cookie money.
35. Yes to keeping your mouth shut.  Sometimes this is the best option.  
36. Yes to no.  Sometimes this is the best option.
37. Yes to prayer.  This is always the best option.
38. Yes to birthdays.  Celebrate them fully.  They are not just calendar days but gifts of life, growth, change, experience.  Parties are optional but cake is not.  

At thirty-eight, I live the most ordinary life in a suburban neighborhood dotted with SUVs where moms run taxi and dads cut grass.  I never would have thought what a miracle it would take to get to a place of ordinary and how happy I’d be with first world problems.  I ran across this quote that was written below some picture of a baby horse snuggled up to a teddy bear.  I can’t figure out what in the world this quote had to do with the horse and the bear, but it’s a pretty good summary of where I am and what thirty-eight looks like:  

"There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living."

Here’s to thirty-eight - the party's just getting started.

KJ