by Susie Merz
October 27th, 2020 marked seven years since my collarbone broke. That day in 2013 split my life in two: my life before cancer, and my life not after cancer but with it, BC and WC.
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The details of that day are still with me: the pain that washed through my body and the long wait in the ER with the sounds of others around me in distress.
There was a young man in the ER who kept going into the washroom to cough and either gag or throw up. I couldn’t quite tell which. I tried not to listen to him, fearing that my stomach would respond in kind.
Once I had been x-rayed and checked into the closet-like room in the back bay, I could hear this man across the way. Curtains provided the illusion of privacy, but I heard his entire conversation with the doctor.
Chia seeds. He ended up in the ER because he ate several spoonfuls of chia seeds. Oh you silly man, I thought. Everyone (or almost everyone) knows that chia seeds expand in moisture. And so they had, becoming lodged in his throat on the way down. Poor guy, he had probably heard somewhere that chia seeds were healthy and then he didn’t explore further how to eat them.
When the Dr. came by to speak to me about the x-ray of my collarbone, I leaned in toward him and listened with all my might, as though I knew that what he was about to say would change my entire life. After a bit of preamble, I heard him say, “Cancer isn’t usually shaped like that.” He was referring to what looked like bubbles sitting in my clavicle bone. That was the moment where I first heard the word cancer in relation to my body. It took a few weeks for the actual diagnosis, but quite abruptly, I was living WC, and my BC days were over.
At times I wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t have cancer. It’s hard to imagine, because so many of the people in my life, largely through Callanish, are in it because I have cancer. And I would not trade them for the world.
It’s a fruitless exercise in any case, to wonder about that other life. I might allow myself a brief flash of envy---that chia seed guy got to leave the ER that day and was going to be fine. But of course, I don’t know what else might have happened in his life since then. A cancer diagnosis is only one of many difficult life experiences.
I hope he is well, chia seed guy, and I really hope he has learned how to make chia seed pudding.
Susie Merz first came to Callanish as a retreat participant in 2015 and has since joined the staff team as a clinical counsellor. She has worked as a therapist for over 14 years, both in nonprofit agencies and in her own counselling practice.