It’s weird how drastically the meaning of freedom changes when you’re faced with forces bigger than you that take away your control. Before my breast cancer diagnosis, freedom meant the unfettered ability to follow my entertainment and travel whims, work or live wherever I chose, and be as lazy or active as needed (all within my ability to budget, of course). I was recently divorced with no children, responsible only to the lifestyle I wanted to create as a newly single forty-something woman with a cat and dog at home. I was, essentially, as free as my paycheck and savings allowed.
Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and suddenly there was a wholly different road before me. My type of cancer was so common that the oncologist and surgeon leading my medical team had a longstanding plan of how to get me cancer free. That meant a series of tests, surgeries, and treatment steps all dictated by statistics, and while I could’ve gone a different route with second opinions or alternative care, the plan had a proven success rate. That winter, instead of working on the next steps in my career or going on my next adventure, I chose to follow the steps laid out for me.
Cancer treatment makes you a prisoner in your own house and body. I had chemotherapy and radiation from the week before Christmas, 2019, through the end of June 2020. During the worst of chemo, my white blood cell count dropped from normal levels to the sort of dangerously low numbers that make doctors say things like “here’s a thermometer. Check your temp every couple of hours, and if it’s higher than 100 go directly to the emergency room.”
My immune system was overwhelmed and exhausted. My hair fell out. Most days after the chemo infusions unaffectionately nicknamed “The Red Devil” by the nurses, the extent of my travel was between my bed and the bathroom. I lost nearly forty pounds in two months, which I do not recommend, and spent most of my time alone at home because it was just too high a risk to be around people when even a normal cold could kill me.
Around the time my energy started coming back and my immune system had recovered some, Covid hit, and it seemed like the whole world struggled through lockdown. As healthy, frustrated, scared, angry people protested changing protective measures adapting to constant uncertainty, I resigned myself to the extension of restrictions I’d been living with for months already. Freedom became something completely different from before cancer. Instead of big-ticket excitement like running off to Scotland for two weeks on vacation, I celebrated the tiny wins, like the day I managed to walk around the block without my body giving out. During the dark loneliness of Covid I sat with my dog in the sun as often as possible, even when I couldn’t do much more than sit bundled up in winter gear and blankets, because emerging from the cave of cancer funk into fresh air and sunshine felt like an escape from the constant underlying fear of death. I spent the time trapped within the confines of my house and my illness planning the garden and landscaping I needed that spring, because envisioning the wild abandon of thriving herbs and flowers on my deck helped me feel like I could also recover from a long winter.
Freedom became a series of hopeful microcosmic moments in time. I bought a hammock for two, certain I would spend the summer under the shade of the laurel tree in my yard without feeling nauseated. I joyfully smashed my chemo mug on the driveway the day I finished the five-month course of medically induced poisoning to save my life. I planned a trip to my grandma’s cabin that summer with close friends after radiation ended, including SPF 50 for my still-bald head and radiation burned armpit.
My belief that I would not only have a life beyond cancer but that I’d be free again to live to the fullest meant making plans, which is basically giving the finger to cancer. Cancer wants you to freeze, to give up, to stop fighting and accept the end, and there’s a part of me that felt exactly that way when I was diagnosed. That same part of me worried who would take care of my animals when I die, and do I have enough equity in my house to leave my estate out of debt so whichever family member had to handle arrangements wasn’t financially crippled. Cancer wanted that part of me to win, to lie belly up and let the tumor or the horrors of treatment finish me off. But all freedom is hard-won, and the Oncology nurses were very clear at the beginning of chemotherapy that my attitude made all the difference in how well treatment worked.
No matter how much support a person has during their cancer journey, that internal determination to again be free to control their life must come from within, because the secret parts that want to give up whisper in the middle of the night, when you’re the most alone, and continuing to fight is a decision only the cancer patient can make. Planning for a future after cancer is an act of faith and rebellion, and what is rebellion but the determination to be free?
Jessica Settergren has been a solitary witch and Pagan since 1996 and studied many mythologies and traditions for worship, philosophy, and craft. While her personal practice has Wiccan bones, she branched into an eclectic mix of Norse, Greek, and Irish paganism over the years and focused much of her studies through The Irish Pagan School. She’s been dedicated to The Morrigan for over a decade. Her educational background in English and Ancient History feeds her passions for writing and mythology. She’s published in Renaissance Magazine, World History Encyclopedia, Midstory Magazine, and The Black Fork Review. Her book Defying Shadows: For Witches and Pagans Battling Cancer & Chronic Illness will be published by Crossed Crow Books in February 2025.
Jessica was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma, the most common form of breast cancer, in 2019. Her treatment included the most often prescribed: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone therapy, with all the horrid side effects many cancer patients endure. She is now cancer free and lives in the woods in Minnesota with her amazing husband, a busy horde of stepchildren, two dogs, and fAngus the cat who rules them all.
Article by – Jessica Settergren – Published in More to Life – Edition 69
