The test

Imagine you've been diagnosed with a fatal illness. You freak. You grieve. You tell your family and friends. They freak. They grieve. You quit your job. You look at your stuff through the eyes of the people who will have to pack it up after your funeral. You think more about god than you have since puberty.
Then you get a call. Oops. The test was wrong. You do not have a fatal illness. You are fine and dandy.
This happens.
Unfortunately it hasn't happened to me yet, but I'm still holding out for the possibility.
And how does it feel?
More often than not the erroneously diagnosed experience not relief, elation, overflowing joy, but depression. There have been studies. There have been knotted brows and pursed lips at this outcome.
But I get it.
A fatal illness is, indeed, a bummer. But it has its benefits. Having a deadly disease is kind of like having an advanced degree, an exceptional child, or a crazy relative. It distinguishes you. You are different from most of the people you know. Faced with losing you, your loved ones love you more than ever. I kid you not. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Where it gets tricky is the result of the above study. Something's wrong and you start to identify with it. The illness, a source of loads of attention (some delicious, some dreaded), become part of who you are, part of your life. It creates definition. It makes you interesting.
I found in my work as a journalist that it's much easier to write a profile about someone dead than someone alive. A potentially fatal disease provides structure to the story of your life. A beginning, a middle, and an end. It cleans up some of those messy loose ends, like the fact that you haven't saved up for your retirement.
You are not your cancer.
I have heard this expressed many times as a form of encouragement, perhaps with a little bit of chastisement as well. I know what they're trying to say: that you are still a viable person, with other interesting things going on in your life besides xrays, nausea, dr's appointments, chemo, ct scans, disability forms, insurance forms, trips to the pharmacy, constipation, difficult questions from family members, inappropriate questions from people you don't know well.
I am not my cancer, but my cancer is me and is now my vocation. Keeping myself alive and lively, above the dark waters of despair is now part of my avocation. I am not my cancer, but I am not who I was before that fateful summer day in a surgeon's office. I can't say that I'm better or stronger or more in touch with what life is about. I just know that I am bigger than all of it.