Brian Wickman graduated from Bromfield in 1994. He is a 1998 graduate of Duke University, and currently works as the executive office manager of the Benjamin Hotel in New York City. In May of 2006, Wickman was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. After completing several different treatments, he is currently in remission. Wickman recently shared his experience as a cancer survivor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s national cancer survivorship day event, and was pleased to be able to share the text of the speech with readers of the Harvard Press. Wickman can be reached via email at brianwickman@gmail.com.

Brian Wickman (Courtesy photo)

by Brian Wickman

I'd like to start by saying how grateful I feel to be here tonight with all of you. When I was first asked to speak at this event, I was completely flattered and quite excited. Three weeks ago, when I still hadn’t a clue what to say, the prospect of speaking began to seem a bit more daunting. I started getting nervous that I might not be qualified to speak about what it means to survive cancer. Today marks one year and 41 days since my cancer diagnosis. Saturday was the one-year anniversary of the amputation of my left leg and yesterday was 11 months since the removal of my diseased thyroid. It’s only been five months since my first clean scan, and the general prognosis seems to be, “we think we got it all, but we’ll just have to wait and see.” What, then, can I really be qualified to say about surviving cancer? After all, how long must one survive in order to be considered a “cancer survivor”? But I guess the only temporal threshold is death. Really, surviving is just another word for living. And so, as long as I’m alive, I’m a survivor; whether that be one day, a month, a year, or several decades. Ultimately, nobody survives. We are all equally survivors in life, until suddenly (or not so suddenly) we’re not.

But maybe I’ve been asking the wrong question. Maybe instead of trying to come up with the definition of a cancer survivor, I should instead be asking, “why have I survived cancer thus far?” Not necessarily “why didn’t I die,” which is probably a question better left to the doctors. Or maybe not … with cancer, doctors often seem more capable of providing additional questions than definitive answers. For me, the real question is, “why do I want to be alive?” And for me, the answer is love. So in my remaining minutes, I’d like to say a few words about love.

I’ve come to see love as something more than a feeling or a concept. It’s a force as real as anything defined by the laws of physics. Why else its enduring presence in the imaginations of every society throughout recorded history? It remains one of those powerful forces that we know exists with every fiber of our being, but of which we are afforded only brief and fleeting glimpses as to how or why it really functions. I think love is probably the ultimate force. When I look at my own motivations (my fears, my desires, my joys and discomforts) they always seem to lead me back to love. That singular desire to reach out in some way and connect with another person; to signal “here I am,” and to be acknowledged.

Love is a phlebotomist who takes the time to find a good vein, and a doctor who listens attentively and with purpose. Love is a pet’s nuzzling nose. Love is the sudden appearance of a close friend, real or imagined. Love is a glance across the room, or a hand held firmly, or a gentle kiss. Love is sitting silently together. Love is the quiet reassurance of a nurse’s voice in the darkness of delusion. Love is closing my eyes and remembering those who have passed. Love is my sister running the New York Marathon with Fred’s team, and my brother moving 9,000 miles to be nearby during my treatment. Love is my parents spending every single day and every night with me in the hospital. Love is constant, if inconsistently perceived. Love is beautiful and painful and warm.

It sounds cliché, right? But this is why I live, why I choose to survive. I survive in order to learn better how to love and to be loved … what other purpose is there? And in my darkest moments, in my fears and my apprehensions and my rage, I search for love. And if I’m looking honestly, I always find it. I do this neither perfectly nor consistently, but when I practice viewing the world through this lens of love on a regular basis, it significantly improves my perspective.

Let me finish by giving an example of how this has worked in my life. When I was bald and emaciated and unable to feed myself post-chemo, visitors would still say, “You look great!” It made me so confused and angry and annoyed to think that they would so blatantly lie to me, denying the obvious and terrifying downward spiral of my physical body. But one day a friend came to the hospital to visit, and with eyes brimming with tears, he smiled and said, “You look great.” And despite his use of that dreaded phrase, the love I saw in his eyes graced me with a translation. What he meant, what he was fumbling to say was, “I’m happy to see you. I love you and I’m so happy to have you here with me still.” And so now, though I’m still struggling to put on weight and learning to walk again, and working through the myriad of lingering effects of my treatments, I accept the compliments with a smile, because I’m happy to be here too; and so grateful for the opportunity to linger here a while longer.