You know you must learn to live with uncertainty, but you don’t know how.
April 5, 2023 | Story and photos by Payton Titus
The year is 2018. I’m two months shy of my 17th birthday. And I have cancer.
Stage 2 Hodgkin Lymphoma.
My first cycle of treatment — inpatient chemo, outpatient chemo, rest, repeat — is over. I’m tired. Time for a shower.
I turn the faucet as far to the right as it goes and sit on the counter in the steam clouds. Watching them float to the ceiling and dissipate, I wish for a moment that I could do the same.
A few minutes pass, and I step into the shower. The water hits the top of my head and drips down my body — distorted by the treatment, anxiety and a subsequent lackluster appetite.
I think about the night my mom got the call with my diagnosis. I was too afraid to fall asleep, worried I would not wake up in the morning. It seems silly now, in the shower a month into this process, knowing my form of cancer’s survival rate hovers between 85% and 90%. But it was visceral then.
I watch as the water spins down the drain, washing away the stressors of the day, and run my hands through my hair.
A mild tug. A quick release. A twinge of dread.
I look back down at the drain. The water no longer spins. It sits. A clump of my hair blocks it.
I’d never really tied too much emotion into my hair and changed it pretty often. But this transformation felt different.
The year is 2023. I just celebrated my 22nd birthday. I’ve been in remission for five years.
The five-year mark is huge. Many doctors say your cancer is likely gone for good if it hasn’t come back by now. So far, that’s been the case for me.
I wish I could say my dominant emotion at the time of this highly anticipated anniversary is joy. Or relief. Or maybe even gratitude. I feel slivers of them all.
But the most overwhelming emotion is guilt.
Sometimes it feels like none of it ever happened. Like I never had cancer. Until I catch a glimpse of my port and biopsy scars, or a lingering bruise, or a swollen lymph node.
What a privilege: the ability, even for a moment, to forget.
I close my eyes and see the faces of children I met through the pediatric cancer community back home in Jacksonville who are no longer alive. My nose begins to itch. My throat constricts. My eyes well up with tears.
Why am I still here? Why did I get to live? Why did they not?
These questions sit like an elephant on my chest.
Reporting a story keeps me up at night. A busy-work assignment elicits an eye roll. A traffic jam prompts an expletive-fueled rant at the cars in front of and behind me.
But every so often I remember that these are all things those children will never be able to experience. And with that thought, the elephant grows.
What do I have to show for this life I was given? What have I contributed that no one else could have? What am I here for?
The author (right) poses with her mom Kristen Titus. Both shaved their heads after the author’s first treatment cycle, but their hair (and the author’s eyebrows) is starting to grow back.
I try to recognize that my existence does have purpose. Being a sister. A partner. A friend.
It’s easier to remember on some days than others.
The year is still 2023. I’m a month away from graduation. I’ll be awarded a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a specialization in sports and media and a minor in women’s studies.
The job market isn’t looking too good. I’m afraid of what the future holds.
I’m feeling like I did that day in 2018. A twinge of dread. And these feelings of anxiety spawn feelings of shame.
At least you are alive and healthy enough to be looking for a job.
I haven’t figured out how to reconcile all these swirling soppy storylines. And as much as I hate leaving things unresolved, I fear that’s my only option here.
Figuring out how to sit with uncertainty. Figuring out how to keep going.
Figuring out how to move past it.