A Master Class in Self-Love

Wendy Hammers

• Weight loss led to my diagnosis
• Whipple and chemotherapy
• Turning pain into purpose

It’s Christmas 2014. My weight is up, my self-esteem is down, and my pants are stretched out.

I’m tired of being chubby. I push back from our holiday dinner table and resolve to lose weight. The next day, I head to Weight Watchers. I attend weekly for six months, and eventually I reach my goal! I am thin . . .  but only for a hot minute. So, I do what all good emotional eaters do—I celebrate with fudge brownies.

I return a week later and, to my shock, I’ve lost more weight! “Your scale is broken,” I tell the man behind the counter with the plastic name tag. He assures me it is not. It turns out that I am broken. I just don’t know it yet.

What happened next was something I had dreamed of my entire life. No matter what I ate, I couldn’t stop losing weight. Every time I had some food, it would immediately go out the other end. I also started having extreme and excruciating pain on my left side. I figured I’d just had some bad sushi. My husband said, “People don’t lie in pain on their office floor for a week from a bad tuna roll. Please go to the doctor.”  So, I did.

A week later, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

An Impossible Diagnosis

“That’s impossible,” I told Dr. Marc Wishingrad, my gastroenterologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles, California). I didn’t even know where the pancreas was! But I had it: cancer. You know, the thing other people get.

I was very healthy until the moment I got sick. I exercised regularly. I didn’t drink or smoke. I ate more veggies than fries. There was no family history of pancreatic cancer. But I still had it. That began my eleven-month cancer dance. I hired a cancer coach (yes, that’s a thing). Her name is Marisa Harris. She is a stage IV survivor, and I wanted to stand on her shoulders.

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I did everything recommended by Western and Eastern medicines that made sense to me, starting with 12 rounds of FOLFIRINOX, which my doctor affectionately referred to as FU, and a Whipple procedure at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.  I knew that I didn’t have the emotional, physical, or psychological bandwidth to debate between living and dying, so I picked living and hoped I was right.

The “Other Side” of Cancer

I spent a lot of time thinking, meditating, journaling, and envisioning what my life would look like on the other side of cancer. I just assumed there would be an “other side.”  And on Thursday, May 12, 2016, the other side finally appeared. My oncologist, Dr. Lee Rosen, told me the findings from my most recent scan were “unremarkable.”  This turned out to be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!

For me, pancreatic cancer became a master class in self-love. The diagnosis forced me to ask for help. I had no choice. People cooked for me and my family. A friend helped me get into the bathtub because I was too weak to do it myself. I let myself be helped, led, and loved. I got better.

What Cancer Taught Me

Cancer taught me that my body is a genius and deserves a standing ovation for keeping me alive. Here are a few things I learned:

1. Health and mental wellness are my gauges. Choices I make in my life are guided by whether something brings me closer to health or takes me further away from it.
2. I removed drainers and strainers from my life and surrounded myself with loving, healthy, and like-minded people.
3. I don’t take a single day of my life for granted, and I now have an excuse for my joy.
4. I understand that everything—divorce, cancer, pandemic, financial insecurity—led me to the place I am today and shaped who I am now.
5. I’ve expanded my understanding of what’s possible and don’t limit my life vision to what I already know.
6. I focus on the blessings—the glass is half full, not half empty.
7. I have come to believe that part of the reason I got sick was that I could get better, talk about it, and help others. As a motivational speaker, I lead a session called “I Broke Up with Cancer.”
8. My life today is the best it has ever been. I have today and no guarantee of tomorrow. I know it to be true that I really have this moment. And I’m good with that.

Cancer informed, shaped, and transformed my life in extraordinary ways that I never dreamed possible. It’s all about turning pain into purpose. Realizing that I could have lost my life committed me to not wasting or losing another precious moment.

Watch Wendy tell her story in “Dancing on the Other Side of the Fire.”