A Q&A with someone who has cancer (me)

Sunset over Lac-Saint-Jean captured in my sunglasses last week. Not pictured: my suicide breast.

I think that 40% of my conversations in the past two weeks have been about how I’m doing and how I found out I had breast cancer. For the benefit of everyone, here’s a Q&A about things are going.

How are you doing?

I’m fine. I feel great because I haven’t yet started any treatment. I’m in the golden hour. Everything looks wonderful. Sure, the cancer’s there and doing cancer stuff, but I don’t feel it. But soon, the sun will set and I’ll either have a lump removed or my breasts (I guess two giant lumps) removed. I don’t know yet.

Why don’t you know?

I’m waiting to find out if I have the breast cancer gene. If i do, the surgery will be more intense and the treatment will be different. I had my blood work last week and should have those results next week.

Does that mean you still don’t have a surgery date yet?

Yes, still no date.

Isn’t that driving you crazy?

Not really. It would be great to have a date to focus on but I know that it will be in a few weeks. That’s good enough for me.

How did this all start?

I’ve had this lump for 18 months at least. But it doesn’t feel like a lump. It feels more like a soft dime. And given that I have generally lumpy breasts, it’s barely noticeable. My doctor didn’t think it was a big deal when he felt it (he sent me to all the tests so that isn’t to say he didn’t take it seriously) and even the surgeon had a hard time finding it. It is extremely un-lump-like.

But you said you … noticed … it

Right, yeah, I did. I’m the one that found it.

Back in Sept. 2019, the day before my manuscript for my book Take Back the Fight was due, I was sitting in my doctor’s office waiting room furiously trying to finish up edits. I had a lump (a proper lump) in my armpit. My doctor didn’t like it one bit. He arranged for me to immediately have a mammogram. I got the results back three days later: all clear. I flew off to LA the next day. Let me tell you: that trip abosolutely ruled given the news I had just had. It barely even bothered me that my flight left Montreal at 4 PM and landed at Montreal at 10 PM. We had a mechanical issue. Everyone thought we were going to die. I realized in my Air Canada-funded motel that night that I had gotten through customs with my partner’s weed pipe — he had asked me to carry it the day before. I panicked. Was there any weed in it? I chose ignorance and went back through customs again with the stupid pipe. Landed in LA that next morning, late for my conference but very happy.

You should have ditched the pipe …

I know. But I didn’t. He still uses it.

What happened to that lump?

Eventually it went away. It was likely a swollen lymph node that was the result of taking a ball to the chest during soccer. All of that is to say that I had a clear mammogram in 2019.

Could this lump have been missed?

Maybe, but what they were looking at was on the other side.

So you found this dime thing in your breast more than a year ago …

Yes, and I paid close attention to it. It wasn’t stuck to anything in my body. It felt smooth and wasn’t changing in form. I didn’t raise it at an appointment with my new doctor in 2024 because I didn’t want him to think that he was taking on a new patient and I was going right to the “please give me a mammogram” phase so quickly. I kicked myself for not having raised it, but by not raising it, it also gave me another year where while I probably had untreated cancer, I also got a lot of work done.

Sorry, but that sounds insane. You could have had this diagnosed last year and you’re happy you didn’t?

I don’t know enough about what I’m dealing with yet to feel regret about this. I know that there’s no lymph node involvement in the imaging and the thing didn’t change from what I could feel. That was going to be my sign: either it changed or another appointment came up and that’s when I’d raise it with my doctor. But during this past year, I’ve visited dozens of cities, spoken to thousands of people, saved the CCPA from insolvency, hired our union’s first full-time employee and almost doubled the membership, published two books, helped take the Canadian Association of Labour Media into the stratusphere, toured the podcast across Atlantic Canada … none of that would have been possible had I had this diagnosis a year ago.

But you might have caught it earlier…

Yeah. Such is life. My doctor also told me that we may not have caught it for another ten years until my I’m 50 mammogram so I’m chalking this up to a win. Maybe I’ll regret it later.

Ok so this lump is there. Can I feel it? Like, for informational purposes only.

If you ask me this IRL you will have a 40% chance of me saying yes. I’ll depend on my mood.

Do you have any other symptoms?

None. No pucking or dimpling or discharge or anything else. Nothing. Nothing hurts, I’m not abnormally tired. Nada.

And so you had the mammogram, and then …

I had the mammogram (which does not suck. Don’t put yours off because you’re afraid of it — it’s really no big deal. It’s easier than a blood test). They moved me right away to an ultrasound (which I actually had to cut out of because my kid had a concert in 40 minutes and I had his instrument. They scheduled me for the next day). That’s when they staged the lump BIRADS 4C. I flew to St. John’s to run a conference. Then, a week later, I had a contrast mammogram where I was injected with this warming fluid (iodine) and then had the biopsy. During the biopsy, they also investigated another lump that the ultrasound located and scored BIRADS 4A … it turned out to be a cyst. Otherwise, there is nothing else in either breast.

That sounds like good news?

Yes, very.

Do you know the stage?

No, they need to take the lump out and get it into a lab to stage it. They are also taking the auxillary lymph node out too to study it. If they find cancer under a microscope in my lymph node, my treatment plan will be different than if they don’t.

And that will all happen at this yet-to-be-scheduled surgery

That’s right.

Are you afraid for what comes next?

Honestly, not really. Am I afraid every time I ride a bike on a road that is built for cars alone? No. I may die from breast cancer, just like I may die from riding my bike and telling the wrong guy to go fuck himself.

Really though?

I’m not looking forward to surgery and I’m not looking forward to learning that during surgery they found out that it’s much worse than what showed on the imagining and in the biopsy. But I’m not afraid. I’m ready.

Have you told your kids yet?

No. I got the news an hour before my one kid left for Switzerland on a school trip. I want to tell them together. They should both know early this week.

How have people reacted?

The reactions have been amazing. I appreciate every single one. I imagine myself running a marathon while reading the comments on Facebook and them all being shout at me as I round the next corner. I have received hundreds of comments, I’ve had friends insist on seeing me right away, I’ve had infinite offers of help. It’s been amazing. And I’ve tried to respond to everyone but sometimes a message just gets pushed down too fast by other messages.

You seem chill about all of this. How?

Living as a writer in Canada is a non-stop parade of indignity. Nothing about my career has been fair. Nothing about my work has been appreciated in the way that I hoped or believed it should be. I was born in the wrong era, I write the wrong things, I have angered the wrong people, no one will hire me for real, I’ve literally never had a break I don’t think once in my entire career. My career has been a series of concrete walls that I continuously slam my body into in the hopes of charging through. But I can’t charge through them. It’s the perfect training to battle an invisible illness that isn’t fair, that isn’t happening in the way that I think it should happen. I guess I should thank the censors.

You’re known to be controversial (which is idiotic because you’re mostly just correct) but I have to ask: what’s your most controversial cancer take?

Amid all the emotions I have related to this illness, there is a little bit of relief. My past year has been so nuts that I finally have something that will force me to stop. I can’t promote my books any longer because I need to stop. I have gotten to the CCPA through an incredibly tumultuous time and now, I can hand most of the heavy lifting over to someone else (please donate: www.policyalternatives.ca). I have imagined myself many nights this past year just falling into the abyss. It has been a lonely year, with people who should be in positions to help me out telling me that sadly, they’ve done everything they can and I’m on my own. I made -$370 on my five books combined in 2024. It is a testiment to my last year and how stupid hard I have worked that I greet this diagnosis with a mix of optimism and relief.

Sure, I might lose work because no one wants to book a speaker who can’t 100% commit to a gig, but what’s more indignity in the grand scheme of things? Income from my part-time job, my Substack and the podcast should sustain me.

So the message is … create a tortured living and experience relief when you receive bad news?

I guess. Damn, that’s grim.

You’re going to write about cancer now, aren’t you?

Hah. When I told a friend of mine that I was waiting for results, after insisting that it would be benign, she said, well at least you can use this for your career. You can write about it, the health system, adovcate for change … I love that she thought this for me but I do not think this for me.

I don’t plan to write about it beyond writing like this. Not (always) in bizarre Q&As with myself, but to give everyone updates. My life is too diffuse to be able to tell every person I love what is up and so yes, I will write about breast cancer. But mostly, I think, I will write about breast cancer and me.

When I first had kids, I realized that every writer who thinks they’re living parenthood for the first time in the history of humanity tries to write about their absolutely not unique, mundane experiences as if they’re the first person to ever live them. Rarely, does a writer write about something so mundane and offer something novel and personally, I hate it. I find that kind of writing to be among the most boring, navel-gazing shit out there. And I am aware that I’m like the billionth person to have cancer and probably the 500 millionth person to have it who is a writer. I’m not going to try to be novel or interesting. While it’s true that I became a health reporter during COVID lockdowns, I have no interest to do the same thing here. But who knows what’s next. Never say never unless you know for sure.

This interview has been edited for clarity as the subject mostly just rambled for 3 hours.