What Facing Cancer Taught Me About Fear

And then my greatest fear came to pass. In 2021, I learned that after a decade of remission, the leukemia was back. To relapse after that long is extremely rare, and my prognosis was not good. I thought, “I might die this time,” and that felt frightening. But I had done a lot of work to figure out who I was, what I wanted and even how I would do things differently if I got sick again.

During a second bone-marrow transplant, rather than feeling frozen by fear, I invoked a creative practice to defang it. Medication temporarily impaired my vision, so I journaled in voice memos and watercolors. When my husband, Jon, and I had to be apart, we stayed connected through the lullabies he composed for me daily. And when I grew so weak that I needed a walker, I bedazzled every inch of its drab frame with colorful rhinestones. Afterward, instead of pity, Li’l Dazzy and I were met with delight and, incredibly, a passing shout of “Cool walker!”

I survived that transplant, but I will never be considered cured. I’ll be in treatment indefinitely, and it can feel as if the sword of Damocles is hanging over me. But giving fear free rein makes it hard to live. You’re afraid of rebuilding, because what you create may collapse — but then you just exist in wreckage. And the truth is, sometimes fear makes it hard to see when things are good.

When I returned home months after my transplant, I opened my closet and saw something shadowy and rodent-shaped on the floor. I slammed the door and called Jody, who came over to investigate. Afterward, he came downstairs and said I had a serious problem on my hands. I felt seized with panic and asked if I needed to call an exterminator.

“No,” he said. “A shrink.” It wasn’t a mouse; it was a pouch of patchouli.

I began working on my fear of mice in clinician-directed exposure therapy. And it worked. I no longer see mice as harbingers of doom. I understand that they’re a fact of life, in the city or the country. And while I would still prefer to have Jody — whom I call “Angel Man” for all the miraculous ways he comes to my aid — remove the occasional mouse, I don’t feel I need to move out every time I see one. If mice were to return, I could deal with it.