Mary Beth's Story: The Year The Unthinkable Struck Twice

In January 2019, Mary Beth went in for a routine appointment and came out with a cancer diagnosis. Ten days after her own surgery, her husband received a diagnosis with a five percent survival rate. 

What followed was a year that asked everything of her — and she showed up for all of it.

This is a story about what you do when the weight is too heavy to carry alone. About the song you put on repeat. About the meltdown in the hotel hallway that let you walk back into the room. 

About the strange courage it takes not to hold on, but to let go.

Mary Beth Plank Mezo is a coach who helps women move from feeling like life is happening to them to knowing they can respond to whatever life brings. This story is where that conviction was forged.

If you are the one holding everything together right now, this episode was made for you.

Connect with Mary Beth:

https://www.lifeleadershipessentials.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

https://www.facebook.com/marybethLLE

Find your next Tiny Brave Step: www.tinybravesteps.com

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Courage Architect, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: bernice@bernicemcdonald.com
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You know the call they always tell you might come someday? The one you push to the back of your mind because the idea of it is just too frightening. For Mary Bath, that call came on an ordinary day in January 2019. She'd gone in for a routine gynecological appointment, just the regular tests, nothing unusual. And then her phone rang. Day said, you need to come back in and bring someone with you. She asked, as any of us would.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Why? And the exact word that the person said was, Well, in case you can't handle the news.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

In case you can't handle the news. Her husband was out of town, so she called a friend. And then when they called her friend into the room too, she knew she had cancer. Uterine cancer.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Here's what she did next. Well, the first thing I did was I just didn't think of anything and went on a shopping spree with my friend. We just spent a whole bunch of money. And I don't I knew that that was not what you're supposed to do, but I did it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

She went shopping. And honestly, that might be the most honest thing anyone has ever done in response to news like this. Because most of us, when the news is too big to process, we don't fall apart on cue. We do something human and strange and a little bit absurd. We buy a pair of shoes, we eat a whole pizza, we binge three episodes of something we've already seen. We do whatever our body needs to do before it's ready to face what's actually happening. I'm Bernice McDonald, and this is Mary Beth's courage story. And if you've ever been the one holding everybody else together while quietly falling apart inside, this one is for you. Act one, wake up your courage. Here's what you need to understand about Mary Beth before the year 2019. She was by every measure the picture of health. She taught yoga, she was careful about what she ate, she had a husband and three children, a career she loved at full-sale university in Orlando, and a life that felt solid. She had never had a health challenge, not one.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, so that was very surreal for me. I never had thought of myself as anything but completely healthy. And um, you know, I taught yoga, I had a healthy diet, so it really changed the image that I had of myself.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

She had her surgery, a hysterectomy, scheduled for April 15th. The margins were clean, she was going to be okay. But the same week her surgery was scheduled, her husband, who had been struggling with abdominal pain for two years, pushed for his own scan. Doctors had told him that nothing was wrong, but he wanted the scan anyway. And then his phone rang. They said you need to come back in. Bring a family member. Mary Beth already knew what that phrase meant.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

We of course never would have expected for him to say pancreatic cancer, but we we thought it was gonna be something because so we were yeah, I remember being in that waiting room scared, you know, just scared, and then just un not even believing the words that came out of his mouth, uh the doctor's mouth.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Pancreatic cancer, five percent survival rate after five years. April 5th, his diagnosis, April 15th, her surgery ten days apart, both of them. She had gone in for a routine appointment and come out the other side of a year that would ask everything of her. Her own surgery, his diagnosis, months of chemotherapy, months of radiation. A surgeon in Orlando who looked at her husband's scan, said the tumor was too close to the aorta. He wouldn't operate. The terror of that moment.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

I I was very scared that he was gonna die. I was very scared that he was gonna die. Because, you know, you don't even think about 5%, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

And then a second surgeon at the May Clinic who said, I do 500 of these a year.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

So it was, you know, really a miracle that the guy, the doctor at the Mayo Clinic. It was a good miracle that the first doctor wouldn't do it because we got this second surgeon at the Mayo clinic who was a young and you know, courageous man who said, I can get that out of there. And he did.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

He did. Surgery was scheduled for December 13th, which just happened to be her birthday.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So I feel I felt like God is not gonna take my husband on my birthday. So I loved that date.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

This is what waking up your courage looks like when you didn't ask for the wake-up call. It's not a dramatic declaration, it's not a warrior's speech in front of the mirror. It's standing in the wreckage of everything you thought was solid. Your health, your husband's health, your family's future, and deciding, even with shaking hands, even in the middle of the terror, that you are going to face it. That's the first brave step. Showing up to the thing you cannot control and refusing to disappear. Act two, embrace who you are. We call our fear Fred because separating yourself from it and giving it a name takes away its power. When something this big lands, Fred doesn't just whisper, he moves in, he brings luggage, he sets up in the living room of your mind and starts naming every worst-case scenario out loud. Mary Beth heard all of them. Every fear you'd expect and some you wouldn't. She felt her own body betray her.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Absolutely, yeah. I'm like, what why is my body failing me now? You know.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

She felt the terror of watching her husband face something that could take him. She felt the weight of her children watching both their parents navigate cancer at the same time. And then there were the moments when the weight of it all pressed so hard, she couldn't see any further than the next breath.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

With something that overwhelming, I I've had a very wonderful life, and nothing has ever happened in my life like that. And so finding it hard to cope even with anything, you know, I would just um say, you know, I have my, I got two arms, two legs, I have breath in my body, I'm gonna take a breath, you know, and then I'm gonna exhale. And I would literally just breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, and take one step here, take one step there. Um, and I I mean I'm being very little when I say literal when I say one step at a time. I don't mean it metaphorically, um, just to get me through the day and get up, get going, keep busy.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

One breath, one step, not metaphorically. This is what embracing who you are looks like when the noise is loudest, not a recitation of your strengths, not a vision board, just I know I have two legs, I know I can breathe. I'm going to focus on those two things first. She also knew something else about herself. She knew she needed more than she could create all by herself alone.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

A lot of praying, a lot of um yoga, a lot of meditating. I mean, I did a lot of things. I got a spiritual advisor, um, I went to Ayurveda therapy. I did a lot of things to cope. And um, I listened to there's this one song I listened to more than a thousand times. It was it's called Healing Is Here. And I would have a direct line singing that because um the hospital that my husband had to go to was two hours away. So I would go home and back. Um, and for a while there I had to live in Jacksonville, but I would sing that song, put it on repeat for two hours singing that song, and I knew he was gonna be healed. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

More than a thousand times, two hours each way. That's a long drive with fear in the passenger seat. She didn't try to silence the fear, she sang over it. She chose what she was going to fill the space with, and she filled it. She wasn't in denial, she was a woman who knew herself well enough to know that she needed to stay upright. And she let others in, friends who came alongside, a yoga community where people would share their own stories of survival, strangers who became, as she called them, angels.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

You know, I taught yoga and I would meet the most interesting people that would share their stories, you know, of inspiration, you know, their father, their aunt, themselves had a good, a good hell, a good cancer outcome. And it's just like I felt like, oh, all these people are coming into my life for this time to give me courage. They are sending me courage. And I just saw the miracles that were happening every single day. Uh, it it's it um it was a real wake-up call in life.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

She was paying attention. Even in the middle of all of this, she was paying attention to what was good. That takes a particular kind of discipline. The kind that comes from knowing yourself and choosing deliberately which voice gets the most airtime. Act three stand up for you. The surgery was thirteen hours long. His whole family came, his mother flew in from Puerto Rico, his sister, her children, and they waited. They got everything out, the entire tumor, the entire pancreas. He was alive. And then the complication started. He ended up in the hospital for two months. She moved into the hotel next door. She would go to him during the day, be the person in the room who showed up steady, hopeful, calm, and then walk back to the hotel alone at night. Her daughter was still in high school, home alone. And Mary Beth was holding all of it. Herself, her husband, her kids, her faith, her fear every single day.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I I don't remember being angry, um, but I do remember being um pitiful. Woe is me. Why is this always happening to me? You know? And and so I do remember that, and I and I didn't like feeling that way, you know, it just didn't serve me at all.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

She noticed when she was sliding towards something that wasn't going to help, and she talked herself back.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

It would happen frequently, and I would have to talk myself out of it. You know, there there was no time or space for any of that. I just, you know, was unable. I I couldn't allow that in because I was trying to manage my emotions so much that um I just had to sort of, you know, say goodbye, you know, say, you know, you can't come any closer.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

You can't come any closer. She wasn't performing strength, she wasn't acting as if she was strong, she was managing a resource, her own emotional capacity. Because she knew she had a job to do, and that job required her to be present enough to walk back into that hospital room and be the one who brought light. But there was a moment when even that wasn't possible anymore. She was on the phone with her sister, and she broke.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

And so I had to release it. And so it was just a feeling of release, like, okay, that's no longer mine to hold. I I have that was my breaking point. I'm unable to hold anymore, and um, so I just let it go. If I'm gonna be, this was when he was in the hospital um uh for the two months, and if and if I I had to be helping him live because you get so low, so distraught as a as a human who's in this, and it was he was hurting, and so um I had to go in there and be the person that is the inspirer. So I that burden had to get off of my shoulders so that I could go back into the room, so that I could go back into the room.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

That's the brave act here. Not holding it all together, but letting it go so she could go back in. Standing up for yourself doesn't always look like fighting. Sometimes it looks like collapsing on the phone with your sister so you don't collapse in the room where your husband needs you to be strong. She knew the difference, she gave herself the meltdown she needed, and then she picked herself back up.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

There the hotel I stayed at was right next door to it. Um, so people would walk back and forth um to the hospital, but I would go to you know be there during the day with my husband, then I would come back and I would go to the downstairs eatery, and I would order myself a drink, and I would order myself some good food and just yeah, just fed out. And then I would go back to the room and watch just silly television, silly television, and um that's how I escaped. That's how I escaped.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

She gave herself permission not to be superhuman, just to be a person who also needed to rest, who needed mindless TV and a good meal and a quiet room and a night to just exist without anything being asked of her. That's not weakness, that's actually strategy, and it kept her in the fight. And here's what happened after the meltdown, after the release, after she went back in March 17th, 2020. His CA 19 numbers were finally low, near zero, which meant he is cancer free.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yes. They took the entire the entire tumor out and the entire pancreas out.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

That is a miracle. And that date, March 17th, 2020, that was the day that COVID hit.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

We were like, we can we can all hang around at home together.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

After a year of fighting for his life, after everything, they got to go home and just be together. Act four, create your impact. It's been six going on seven years since that year. Mary Bass is a coach now. She works with women, and when she talks about what she wants to give them, you can hear what that year gave her.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Um, I feel like I'm able to better see people and you know, and understand them. And I know that every single person on this planet has a story and something that they're dealing with that I may or may not be aware of. So I feel like it gave me a lot of compassion for others.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Compassion that was earned, not assumed. She knows what it's like to be the person in the room who looks completely fine. She knows what it costs, and she knows what women carry in silence that no one around them can see.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Be able to think about life in different terms, you know. Um, for example, um, rather than having an external locus of control, I often see women, you know, this is happening to me. My every the all these things are happening to me when in fact we have Have the opportunity and the ability to respond in a different way. And not, and we can control our circumstances. We can control the way we show up to any situation. And I feel like that lesson that I learned will serve me the rest of my life and would love to help other women understand and learn that about themselves.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

The lesson that the year taught her isn't things work out. It's you get to choose how you move through what happens to you. That's a different thing entirely. It's not optimism, it's agency. The difference between being swept along and being the person who decides, even in the middle of the current, how to hold yourself.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Being brave through the steps that were thrust upon you, or or the circumstances that were thrust upon you, um, that I'm I'm very grateful for that experience to be able to, whatever the situation is, we can rise above. We can, whatever the situation, I know for a fact that we can.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

She knows for a fact, not because it's a nice thing to say, because she lived the year where both she and her husband had cancer, where the first surgeon said no, where she sang a song on repeat for two hours in each direction, where she broke down with her sister in a hospital hallway and then went back into the room. She has the evidence, and now she holds it up like a mirror for the women she works with.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

To see themselves and all the strides they have taken. A lot of times when we're in a in a place of despair, we can't see the steps we've already taken, you know, and so being um a mirror for them to help them understand and realize how far they've come.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

This is what courage grows into when you let it. Not just survival, purpose. The woman who had to be held up is now the woman doing the holding. If you're in the middle of a year that is asking everything of you right now, if you're the one holding it together for everyone else while quietly wondering how much longer you can do that, I want you to hear what Mary Beth would say to you.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

I have would never have known so many of the miracles that occurred during that terrible year that I had and my husband had, that we would come out so much better. So it's it's hard to tell people that when they're deep in the heart of it. And this one to be flawed, to be fallible, to be low, to be high, to be anything that comes up is okay. It's all a part of the human experience.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

All of it. The shopping spree and the meltdown and the silly TV and the song on repeat and the going back in, all of it is okay. All of it is human, all of it is you doing the best you can with what you have. And one more thing she said that I want to leave you with groups, support, community is just uh a lifesaver.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Community is a lifesaver for people who are going through hard things, and so um even if the tendency is to want solitude, um, encouraging their support in others.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Don't do it alone. Mary Beth didn't, and she's still here, still standing, still holding the mirror up for other women so they can see how far they've already come. If you need someone to help you face something that's pulling you in a hundred different directions, doing your best to navigate this chapter and move on to the next, you can find Mary Bash at life leadershipessentials.com. I'm Bernice McDonald, and this has been a courage story. I'd love for you to share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear that she can get through hard things. And if you need a simple tiny brave step to get you through this next day, this next hour, or maybe this next minute, come find me at tinybravesteps.com. There's a free tool there called the Tiny Brave Steps Generator. And it was made for exactly this moment. And listen, you are brave enough. You always have been.