Learning to face forward.

• Author: Clarke, Michele Howe
• Position: Psychology - Coping with head and neck cancer - Essay

IT IS SAID THAT the only constant in life is change--isn't that just like life? You can be trucking along just free and, then, barn, life socks you a good one. You realize all was not as it seemed. The image you have been projecting about your life story has been shattered by an extraordinary event.

Mine was head and neck cancer. It caught me midstride in a neat and tidy materialistic life. My story is of a life abruptly changed--a woman greatly enhanced by a piercing experience. For me, there is no going back. I wear the scar of this battle on my face. I forever am marked so as never to forget. I am reminded every time I look in the mirror; my every interaction with others is impacted.

When I named 33, I was 40 days into living with cancer and the right side of my face was paralyzed. I was on a real roller coaster of operations: three head and neck surgeries in 31 days; 18 of those days spent in the hospital recovering from being sliced open, from the crown of my head to the middle of my throat. I had to sacrifice my right facial nerves to have a chance to live. If that were not traumatic enough, add a crazy infection oozing green puss from holes that formed in the side of my head. I am told all of these are unexpected and Me events. Hey, that's my style.

This time in my life was filled with raw emotion, crashing realities, and was set in the backdrop of sterile halls and alien doctor-peak. I did the only thing I could--I began really living my life, enjoying the challenge, letting myself feel the pain. I learned to live through pain, live in the present, and give myself and space I needed.

Cancer and my subsequent disfigurement showed me how enmeshed my life was in the myth of perfection, which goes like this: I believed that, if I looked good, had a killer body and clothes, owned my own home and car, had nice possessions, I would be perceived by others as doing well--and therefore I was doing well. I was vice president of one of the world's largest investment banks. I had the myth in the palm of my hand.

I had a smile that stopped traffic and gave people a reason to smile back. My smile was my passport into friendship and accomplishment. Many a time it had carried me through as nothing else could. I relied on, and lived by, my smile. Ironically, that was the very thing I had to sacrifice. My mask had been taken from me and there was nothing to hide behind. All the imperfection that I secreted away now stood out for the world to see.

With...