Merlin B.’s Story
My name is Merlin B. and I am a cancer survivor living in Clearwater, B.C.
I have had four separate cancer diagnoses and a few other inconclusive biopsies. I only count the ones that required surgery at a hospital with an Anesthesiologist and a surgical team.
My first cancer diagnosis was at the age of 27. I was single and away from family support. Fortunately, my diagnosis and surgery was very quick, but it required a 300 km round trip drive in the worst of winter conditions. I told my oncologist to just call me with the results (or get my GP to do it) because I was risking my life to travel to and from his office in winter.
Traveling to Vancouver for radiation took me 500 km away from my home and my job for over two months. Even though my treatments were just a couple hours every few days, there was no point in going home. I stayed with my mom in her one bedroom apartment in Burnaby, and actually slept on the laundry room floor so I could recover. When the side effects got too bad for that, my mom gave up her bed and room.
There are things you never forget about treatment… food and smells that you now associate with cancer, even music. I couldn’t eat chicken noodle soup for a decade because it took me right back there, favourite CDs, soaps and cleaners all trigger those memories.
Ten years later, I was diagnosed with Melanoma. I had no idea what that meant, but the look on my doctor's face told me this was something to take seriously. Researching your own cancer on the internet will terrify you. Stage 2 melanoma wasn’t good. Stage 3 or 4 melanoma at that time was almost always eventually fatal. When you have a second diagnosis, you really consider your mortality… and if you have done something meaningful with your life since your first diagnosis. It can be very dark, stressful times while you await surgery. The sooner you get answers and treatment, the better it is for your mental health. Until you get that lymph node biopsy, a surgical procedure under anesthesia, you really don’t know if you can go back to living your life, or if you should get your affairs in order, not something anyone wants to think about at 27, 37 or even 47. Surgery was relatively fast, but specialist appointments required an entire day of travel – again in winter - for a very short appointment.
Less than 5 years later, I got another diagnosis of Melanoma – in the same leg. The sentinel lymph node was gone from the last cancer, so it was a bit of a guess as to whether it had spread into my body. Surgery took longer. You want the cancer out of your body as fast as possible, you feel every twitch and pain, your mind creates them. I can’t emphasize enough that the stress of waiting for diagnosis and treatment is really bad for your mental health, but also for your physical health - your mind makes you sick.
My latest diagnosis of melanoma (cancer number 4) was three years ago in the height of Covid-19. Surgery and diagnosis took months, not weeks. The stress was intense, especially after relatively fast treatments before. You want to scream “ just get it out of me”. But you just have to wait. This last time, surgical recovery didn’t go well. My wound got internally infected. 20 days after surgery, I was back in hospital getting all my incisions opened up again, requiring months of difficult and uncomfortable recovery.
Every surgery, every appointment - they all required days away, assistance from friends and family, expensive hotel rooms, hundreds of kilometers of travel, with no choice but to wait for good weather. The stress, the time away from work and family and home, in a city you don’t know, with no friends close by to visit… it takes a significant toll on your mental health and, as a result, your recovery.
- Merlin B., Mayor of Clearwater, B.C. and Cancer Survivor