I am not my cancer. Still, some days, cancer is all people see.
I get it because I’ve lived it. When serious illness shows up, it doesn’t knock. It barges in. It can swallow the rooms you used to fill with ease. At family gatherings, you become “the sick one.” People lower their voices. Friends pause before they speak, as if they might say the wrong thing. Your diagnosis starts to stand in front of your name.
That is a hard place to live.
It also takes a kind of courage most people never train for. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that shows up on a Tuesday afternoon, when you’re tired of being talked about instead of talked to. Have you felt that? The moment you realize your body has changed, and people think you have, too?
When illness tries to become your whole identity, you can lose the person you spent years becoming. I spent over 30 years as a maxillofacial trauma surgeon. I was a husband, a father, a mentor, a writer. Then my health journey began, and I watched “patient” try to crowd out everything else. Appointments filled the calendar. Treatments shaped the week. Limits rewrote ordinary days.
Here’s what I learned. Letting illness into your story is not the same as letting it take the pen.
Some parts of me stayed steady, even as my body shifted. My curiosity didn’t fade. My love for my wife, Joyce, didn’t weaken. It grew. My urge to help others, to teach, to connect, stayed put. The illness changed how I lived those parts, but it could not erase them. I could no longer perform surgery, but I could still mentor medical students. I couldn’t run a surgical practice, but I could still write. I could still share what I was learning. I could still sit with someone else’s fear and not look away.
That matters, because when we let illness define us, we give it power it didn’t earn.
Relationships change when your role changes. That shift can feel like grief. Friends who once called often may grow quiet. Some people treat you like glass. You hear the careful tone, the edited stories, the way others hide small complaints because they think you’ve already had “enough.” Many mean well. Still, it can sting. It can make you feel like you’ve been moved to the side of the room, present but not fully included.
What do you do when people can’t see past the diagnosis? When they freeze you in the word “sick,” as if you stopped being yourself?
I’ve had to learn to guide people back to a real connection. I say it plainly: I’m still Ron. Talk to me the way you used to. Tell me what’s going on in your life. Yes, I have health problems, and I’m also a person with strong opinions about books and politics. I still laugh at bad jokes. I still care about your kids, your work stress, and what you’re making for dinner.
There’s courage in that kind of honesty. It is not a speech. It is a boundary. It is a way of saying, “Don’t shrink me.”
Work can be even harder to sort out. For decades, I introduced myself as a surgeon. That title gave me shape. It carried pride. It also carried purpose. When I lost the ability to practice, it felt like losing a piece of my core. I grieved it, and I needed to. Some losses don’t move on until you let them be real.
Then I saw something I had missed. My work identity was not the title. It was the aim under it. To heal. To teach. To serve. Those things still mattered, and I could still do them, just in different ways. The form changed. The purpose did not.
On days I feel well, I can see myself more clearly. I’m an editor encouraging retirement community residents to share their stories. I’m a writer trying to put words to hard truths. I’m a husband who still makes Joyce laugh, and who still wants to be the kind of man she can lean on. These parts of me exist with my illness, not because of it, and not in spite of it.
Reclaiming your identity takes practice. It takes attention. You resist the pull to become only a diagnosis. You look for what stayed true. You remind others, and yourself, that you are more than a chart and a scan. You find new ways to live your values when old ways are no longer possible.
I am not my cancer. I am a man who has cancer, and that difference matters. My illness is part of my story now. It is stitched into the pages. It is not the whole book.
You are still you. Hold onto that on the rough days. Say it out loud if you need to. Let it steady you on the better days. Illness can change the shape of a life, but it does not erase the person living it.
That person, complex, flawed, worthy, and one of a kind, is still here.
