It's Not Your Fault

(Or, How Do Ya Like Them Apples?)

As a lifelong New Englander, I am probably required by body and faith to love Good Will Hunting. And while my favorite scenes have changed over the years, the one I cannot stop thinking about right now is the one where Sean tells Will, over and over, that it is not his fault.

Take even one psychology class, and you can start to identify all the things Robin Williams’s therapist character does well in that scene. But what moves me most is not the technique. It is the repetition. The refusal to let the boy deflect. The insistence, again and again, that what happened to him was not his fault, until he finally believes it enough to break.

I am not saying every cancer patient needs that exact kind of validation.

I am saying everyone deserves it.

The guilt that can come with a chronic, life-threatening diagnosis is immense. I think it may even be one of the great engines of individual advocacy. Not because advocacy is misguided, but because so many of us are trying to save someone else from the helplessness, confusion, or missed knowledge that shadowed our own diagnoses.

The advocates I know do this work because something was unclear until it was too late. One metastatic friend had no idea colon screenings were meant to begin in the early forties. Another did not know men could get breast cancer. Another, who has since died, knew the blood in his stool was not a good sign, but did not know it could mean advanced cancer.

The only other metastatic melanoma shark I know, like me, had no symptoms until the disease reached her brain.

I also turned out to be what is called MUP: melanoma of unknown primary. Doctors do not know where the melanoma on my skin began. One theory is that the original site was recognized and cleared by the immune system, but not before cells had already spread elsewhere.

MUP is rare. It also tends to respond well to immunotherapy, which seems to be true for me so far, too.

Of course, I could spend time wondering what might have happened if skin checks had started earlier, or if something had been caught somewhere along the way. Maybe the origin site would have been found. Maybe not.

The truth is, that question has lost most of its grip on me.

Because going backward is not possible. More importantly, it is no longer where I want to live.

It has taken me until today, nearly two full years into this Cancer Shark era, to know, feel, and accept that this is not my fault.

And if it ever happens to you, it will not be your fault either.

That does not mean there is nothing to learn.

May is Melanoma Awareness Month. Please make a skin check appointment with a dermatologist for yourself and for the people you love.

I love you.