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Ana Michelle Soares: “Cancer doesn’t have to be just suffering”

Life is until it is no more. The phrase seems obvious to most of us, but it has another meaning for Ana Michelle Soares. The journalist, aged 28, discovered breast cancer. At 32, she received the news of metastasis in her liver. She has been in treatment for 10 years. “People who are dying are still alive. They call patients terminally ill, but I’m not finishing anything, I’m here”, warns the Brazilian, author of Whole life (Sextant), launched this year.

Writing is a constant activity in Ana Michelle’s life, so much so that she became a journalist. However, upon discovering the unexpected illness, it didn’t seem to make sense to put anything on paper. The thought changed when Ana Michelle understood that she did not agree with the way people with cancer were portrayed.

“I heard from others that I was a warrior. When someone dies, they say they lost to the disease. They are cancer metaphors, all bellicose. And it seems that you are only victorious in healing. By having a metastasis, am I already a loser?”, she asks. “People have a legacy, a biography that must be respected. It’s insane suffering to hear this champion, heroine and loser speech. You don’t have real solidarity because you don’t talk about the reality of the disease’s routine”, continues Ana Michelle.

In addition to publishing the book, which mixes her story, reflections on experiences over the last decade and poetic texts on love, life and pain, Ana Michelle also founded, along with physician Ana Quintana Arantes, her palliative activist, Casa Paliativa .

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In space, they welcome patients to talk about pain, self-knowledge and life, which does not end before its time. Ana Michelle also listens, a simple and important act for welcoming, but so rare. “I want people to be well cared for, seen, to have their pain legitimized. These people are looked down on almost their entire lives, but they need to show that they’re not giving up. Nothing is perfect and wonderful, but it’s good. Life is the emotional, the psychological, the rain cake, the nice hug you give, the glass of water you haven’t had in a while because you were nauseous after a chemotherapy session and you say: ‘Wow, how nice’ . All of this is part of it”, says the writer.

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#Superpalliative

In September, on her Instagram profile, @paliativas, Ana Michelle posted about her 50th radiotherapy session and joked that she is practically a Marvel character, the Palliative Avenger. Continuous treatment is adapted according to the situation of the disease. “Every time the chemo fails, I switch. I have an arsenal I can draw on, so maybe I have more years to live. But cancer is not just the disease, the physique, as some doctors think. I am lucky to have a multidisciplinary team that takes into account emotional and spiritual issues. The look has to be: ‘How can I help this person to live better?’”, she explains.

Even because, when she discovered the cancer, it was not the physical symptom that hurt Ana Michelle, but thinking about her accomplishments up to that point. “I’m dying and look what I’ve done with my life. I felt guilty, I wasn’t living, just going with the flow, being, putting up with so much. When we understand that there is no time to waste, everything changes, we don’t think about finitude”, she recalls, who sought different therapies, religions and spiritual experiences to better understand the process that unfolded internally. “It doesn’t have to be just suffering. I found the cure for my soul and I want to offer this to other people who don’t find the support they need, ”she says.

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During her treatment and spiritual quests, Ana Michelle met Renata, a friend who had also been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Together, they lived friendship to the fullest, fulfilling dreams and fulfilling some wishes of a bucket list, the dream list for before you die. “I saw what terminality is like when you have support with Renata, my friend. She wasn’t in bizarre grief. She solved all her questions, the family spoke and listened to everything she needed. It gives another meaning to this grief. And another sense for what I thought was the end,” she describes her.

“We spoke very openly about what we thought we had lost, what it was like to die, what we had stopped doing. That was transformative, so honest. I understood how, during life, we waste time trying to convince the other that we are right. But you have to free yourself from that and live life according to what you believe in”, defends Ana Michelle.

Ana Michelle’s book can be purchased here.

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