After Taking Flight, this phase marks a turning inward. Back in the Chrysalis begins with a car ride, a sentence I almost dismissed, and the first signs that life was about to contract in ways we never would have chosen.
(If youâre new to Eclosion: An Artistâs Path to Power and Peace, start at the beginning. Or visit my Memoir Hub for a full table of contents with links.)
âCarrie, when I tell you something is wrong with my body, I need you to believe me.â
We were driving south towards Oregon, Seren in the back. Shon had been telling me about pain in his joints for several months. For several months I brushed those concerns off as exaggerations.
No matter how much I grow and learn, I still find myself pulled into old familial stories. This was a story called âSuck it up and get to work.â Itâs another version of, âWe donât get sick.â These stories, passed down in my family, were rooted in survival for my ancestors and are very difficult to shake.
Shon and I had grown distant over the past year. Seren, thriving in outdoor preschool, was the focal point of our hearts. Though Shon was always an active, loving parent, I was still her primary caregiver, while working part-time for TCAT and keeping several collaborative art projects in motion at once. Shon was working at Evergreen, now as the supervisor of both grounds and construction, with a project list a mile and a half long.
The pandemic was wearing on us, and even with our varied workdays, our interactions had become transactional: Whoâs getting groceries, cooking dinner, fixing whatâs broken, making sure the laundry gets done, doing all the little things that needed doing to keep our home and family going. Each day was the same, right up until bedtime when heâd lie in bed on his phone and Iâd read a book by the fire, then to sleep, only to get up and do it all over again. This trip to meet friends in southern Oregon was a lovely respite from the monotony.
There was something about the way Shon spoke that made me pay attention. I saw in that moment how I was disregarding his concerns about the pain in his body. I felt embarrassed by my disregard and honored that he was willing to be so vulnerable. I knew it wasnât easy for him.
I owned up to brushing off his concerns and promised I would listen in the future. I started to pay attention. And just in time.
On that trip, Shon started changing his diet to reduce the inflammation in his body. Even though our Naturopath couldnât hear anything abnormal, Shon noticed a slight wheeze in his lungs when he laid down in bed at night and insisted that our Naturopath refer him for an x-ray.
That x-ray marked the beginning of a long and terrifying journey. It showed abnormalities in his lungs and led to a CT scan. We were sent to Seattle to see a pulmonologist and rheumatologist.
The pulmonologist didnât receive the results of the CT scan before our visit and couldnât hear anything in Shonâs lungs either. He sent us on our way with no news, but as we were eating lunch before heading home, Shonâs phone rang. It was the pulmonologist. Heâd received the scan and was so concerned by what he saw that he insisted Shon come back to the hospital for another scan that very day.
The scans revealed a mass about the size of a large orange in his right lung. This led to a bronchoscopy, and eventually, the phone call.
He had cancer. In his lungs. In the middle of a pandemic that attacked the lungs.
Even though we knew it was coming, hearing the word âcancerâ felt like a death sentence. My whole body froze. The question mark was replaced with a period. An ending. But instead of lessening our uncertainty, it rose to a fever pitch because we didnât know what came next.
Shon took to the Internet to learn about lung cancer. When he told me what he found, I could sense the panic radiating from him. He read that he had less than five years to live. Less than five years to watch our daughter grow, to do all the things he hadnât yet done. As he shared this with me, he broke downâracking sobs shaking his whole bodyâletting the fear out. I watched him crumble and fear began to grip me too. What if this really was the end? But now was not the time for me to fall apart. I held him, stroking his hair. I loved him. I told him I was with him. All I could do was stay present, hold space, and somehow stay strong when everything felt so damned fragile.
After dropping Seren at preschool the next morning, I came home to an empty house for the first time since the diagnosis. I walked inside and all the fear that Iâd set aside the night before boiled up to the surface, overwhelming me, crashing through me in a riptide that pulled me to my knees. I called a friend as I sobbed on the kitchen floor, terrified, feeling like I was coming undone. I hadnât even realized how afraid I was until I made that call and said the words.
Eventually, we were able to meet with an oncologist. We were warned that many oncologists arenât very personable or positive, instead tending to focus heavily on statistics. Shonâs oncologist, who said to call him Hootie, was not that way at all. Hootie was always very positive and danced around the statistics. In fact, he never gave us a single statistic, even when we asked. We learned from Hootie that Shon didnât have typical lung cancer, but a type of lymphoma that happened to be in his lungs. The fact that it was in his lungs was rare, but it wasnât the death sentence Shon thought it was. Instead, it was a slow-growing cancer that tended to respond to treatment. We came up with a plan, putting off the start of treatment for a couple of months due to the emergence of a new Covid strain, then began the treatment regimen in January of 2022.
Those first few months wereâŠhard is an understatement. We were scared and felt isolated. Many of our friends and community had started to gather again, but we felt like we were thrown right back into the beginning of the pandemicâsurrounded with so much uncertainty and unable to gather for fear that Shon would get sick. If he were to get an infection in his lungs, that infection would be all too likely to kill him.
What has your bodyâor someone you loveâbeen trying to tell you?