Episode 026: Stand Up For Your Rights
Jul 28, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
Simple truth from Matthew Zachary of Stupid Cancer - know your rights and your choices in the quest to crush cancer. Matthew is a true inspiration, with stupid cancer empowering young adults to deal with cancer on their terms! Here is what we cover in this conversation:
The invincibility bubble (AKA your life before cancer)
How knowing your rights and choices can safeguard your future after cancer
Dealing with scanxiety
Stick with what you love during cancer
Safeguarding your future as a young adult facing cancer
Your lifeline during cancer and beyond
The community behind Stupid Cancer
and much, much more!
Links
The Stupid Cancer Show
Matthew Zachary on LinkedIn
Stupid Cancer
Full Transcript
Joe: Hey, Matthew, listen, first off, I want to start with, what was life like before cancer? I know this was a long time ago, so you have to dig up in that memory. What was it like, man?
Matthew: Fabulous and cancer-free. You were invincible. You could do anything you wanted, there were no obstacles ahead of you, blue skies, only optimism. That’s a good thing. You’re supposed to have all of that when you’re 16/17/18/19/20. You need that invincibility to want to take on the world. That was my life.
Joe: Yes, it’s such a fantastic point you bring up, invincibility. You know what, now that I think about it, it really was like that because nothing could happen, you were almost living in this bubble.
Matthew: It’s a good bubble.
Joe: It’s a good bubble, yes.
Matthew: There are bad bubbles, but it was a good kind of bubble.
Joe: Yes, absolutely. Then you find out, they tell you you’ve got six months to live. What was that like?
Matthew: Yes, the last thing on your mind is getting sick when you’re young, let alone getting devastatingly sick when you’re young. It was, to say, surreal is an understatement. It was just denial. It wasn’t possible that this could happen to someone like me, at my age. It’s not exceptional for someone to think that way in general, but when you’re just a kid and you get sick and they say you probably won’t be here in six months, how do you process that? It’s just denial. You’re in absolute consistent denial.
Joe: Did you come out of that somehow?
Matthew: You never really come out of it. I guess just by not dying it helped the narrative that I wasn’t dying and then you keep on hoping that you don’t die. Then eventually time moves on and you figure out that you need to live instead of worrying about dying. That’s the transformation.
Joe: Yes, exactly. Do you know what, Matthew, I don’t know about you, but I have so much advice to share with the old me who went through what was I was going through, through cancer and going through treatment, because I really had no clue what was going on. If you had a chance to do something differently, if you could sit down with your old-self, what would you tell him in retrospect to just make it easier for yourself?
Matthew: One of the most important things to me these days is to guarantee if you’re sick, you know your rights and you know your choices. I would go back to myself 22 years ago and give that version of me his rights and his choices. All the things you should be told right now, that you’re not going to find out anyway. Being able to guarantee that someone diagnosed today is made aware of their rights and choices is the most important thing because you don’t know what you don’t know, your life is in jeopardy. In my case, I was facing chemotherapy that would have put permanent nerve damage in my fingers and toes.
At the time, I was an aspiring concert pianist and I couldn’t play because of the tumour, but if I had any chance of living, I’d rather be able to rehabilitate myself and play again,
