For Geoff Eaton of St. John’s, Newfoundland, here at the city’s Battery Trail on Signal Hill, a cancer diagnosis at 22 spurred a support group that’s still going strong.Greg Locke
Before his cancer diagnosis in 1998, Geoff Eaton had plans to use his recently acquired business degree from Memorial University to build a consulting firm in his hometown of St. John’s, Newfoundland. But after passing out at a friend’s business reception, he was taken to the hospital and given a blood test and medical workup. Mr. Eaton was diagnosed with leukemia. The hospital let him leave just to collect his belongings and have a few hours with family and friends before returning to start his treatment.
Suddenly, his life as a carefree 22-year-old was over. In the next few years, Mr. Eaton went through two bone marrow transplants and a medically induced coma. He also had to teach himself how to walk again. Yet today, he calls himself “the luckiest person alive”.
Mr. Eaton used everything he learned in those trying years to form Young Adult Cancer Canada (YACC), a non-profit support group that turns 25 this year.
In this three-part series, Plot Twists, we explore how people can often feel overwhelmed by life’s unexpected challenges and unsure of how to navigate through them. We’ll meet three individuals who’ll share their experiences and their lessons in triumphing over adversity.
Mr. Eaton is a two-time cancer survivor, and executive director of YACC. He has two daughters and a son, and in his spare time likes to ride his motorcycle with his wife, Karen, do weight training and play hockey. He talks about how a strong sense of community can help people journey through their health challenges.
How did you process your diagnosis at a time when your adult life was just getting started?
The day I heard the word leukemia, I got to go out [from hospital] for six hours with my dad. I had a very real sense that those six hours could be the last six that I get out in the world ever. I quickly prioritized: how do I want to spend these last six hours? That’s actually a beautiful exercise that I would encourage everyone to do. I can see so clearly how my authentic self emerged in those six hours.
What did you do with that brief time?
I used my six hours strategically. My priorities filtered to the top, which were practical: my sweats and my music, my pillow for my hospital room, time with family and supper with my friends.
Then I started to think about how am I dealing with this. You don’t know what’s ahead, but I had a strong sense that the mindset I used to bring to the hockey rink would work well in my hospital room. So I talked about cancer like it was a playoff hockey series. I wore my high school jersey. My dad bought me a stick. It gave me a mindset through which I could envision my experience, and that was incredibly powerful.
What do people who are facing a significant health event need for their healing?
I started an e-mail group a couple of days before my first round of chemo. The group was practical; how do I keep everybody up to date in a way that I can manage? Without knowing it, it became a support group for me.
There’s just pure power in that community. I’m sure there’s lots of papers and research on this, but I just talk about it as the human condition. If you look around your life, you’ll find formal and informal networks, associations, clubs or social groups – people who have similar goals, dreams or challenges. We crave this connection.
Through Young Adult Cancer Canada, your sole focus is supporting people living with cancer in their late teens, 20s and 30s. What do you regularly impart that has come from your own experience?
The cancer experience is so customized. You can have the same person, same age, same diagnosis, same treatment, and yet it can be so different in challenges. I encourage people to cut their own path, whatever that means for them, whatever it looks like for them.
I also encourage people to be their own advocate and if they can’t, to have somebody be it for them. The cancer system does a lot of amazing things every day but putting the patient first isn’t usually one of them. We have to fit into a system. That system works best when you have somebody there to push and pull it in your favour.
Had it not been for your cancer, do you think you would have been an advocate for the power of community?
Yes, I think that’s who I am. Most of my life to that point I was, but more through things like parties on the weekends at my house, not over a life-changing challenge. But gathering people together and the creation of community was natural for me.
Are you the same person you were before going through your diagnosis and treatment?
I did a lot of growing through my cancer experiences. I faced the end of my life several times. At my core, I’m very much the same guy I was the day before I was diagnosed. I’m optimistic. I love life. I love to connect with people. I love helping and serving. So much of who I was before cancer has just been reinforced or extrapolated.