Getting a cancer diagnosis is one of the scariest things most of us will ever face. And everyone responds differently.
Having watched my first husband struggle through a brutal, but thankfully relatively quick, death from esophageal cancer 20 years ago, my diagnosis of Stage 2 breast cancer at the end of 2023 reinvigorated my desire to reprioritize living life to the fullest.
For me, that meant travel. So, I made the decision to cut back on all of my freelance consulting work and only take on travel assignments, with a focus on small-ship cruises as that’s become one of my areas of expertise.
It was both hell and a dream.
The first year after my diagnosis, between surgeries and treatments, I traveled with ease to Antarctica and Ecuador. I sailed for two weeks on a tall ship through Costa Rica and Panama. I spent a week on Europe’s Rhine and Moselle rivers, a month sailing the Mediterranean, and another week on the Nile.
But now, after two years, four surgeries, two hospitalizations for sepsis, a “medical evacuation” from a boat in the remote South Pacific, and feeling like one of my breasts might actually explode from pressure changes on the final descent of a long-haul flight, I still wouldn’t change my decision. Traveling was the one thing (in addition to my very supportive husband) that helped ease my anxiety and kept me positive.
My experiences, however, made it very clear that traveling with cancer, or any serious or potentially serious health issue, is not for everyone. Keeping in mind that I am a journalist with zero medical training, here are some lessons I learned about juggling health issues with my wanderlust.
The need to honestly assess travel stamina and personal limits for risk
I’ve been traveling the world since my father moved our family to American Samoa when I was eight years old, so I am comfortable navigating through the unexpected. That—and my otherwise overall good health—enabled me, with my doctors’ (sometimes hesitant) permission, to push the boundaries as I bounced back quickly from my radiation therapy, surgeries, and a year of post-surgical infection flare-ups.
But I also remembered that when my husband was sick, I pushed too hard to try to introduce some fun into his pain with a trip to the mountains, which ended up being nothing buy misery for him. So, as an infection continued to return in my second year of battling cancer, I paid closer attention to my doctors’ signals and canceled a few planned trips when I could tell they were increasingly hesitant about endorsing more far-flung travel.
In 2024, one year after her diagnosis, writer Jeri Clausing walks towards the 196-passenger World Traveller of Atlas Ocean Voyages in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Courtesy of Jeri Clausing
Keeping the lines of communication with doctors open at all times
Initially, things started off relatively easy for me. My cancer surgeon pushed back my initial surgery for a double mastectomy and the first step of reconstructions so I could take an already planned first-time cruise to Antarctica. While I was a bit nervous about not taking the earliest surgery date available, when I left the examination room to coordinate with the scheduler, she confirmed that “the doctor said go to Antarctica.”
My nontraveling friends were more skeptical and kept telling me to slow down. But my doctors remained supportive—even though they no doubt got tired of me saying, “Well, you see there’s this trip I want to take . . .” when trying to arrange a schedule for new medications and treatments. After my initial surgery, the plastic surgeon cleared me for regular activities a few days early so I could take a last-minute assignment to Ecuador. When the radiation doctor proposed starting my six weeks of radiation therapy immediately upon my return, I once again muttered, “But, you see there’s this trip.” He laughed and agreed to wait two weeks so I could take an assignment for a two-week sailing in Central America.
Leaving my vanity at home, and packing gratitude instead
My enthusiasm for heading out on that sailing to the beaches and islands of Costa Rica and Panama with the boob job I never wanted was tempered, however, when I had to get “mapped” before I left. That meant marking up my chest, back, and underarms to know where to guide the machines for the treatments that would start immediately on my return. And that meant I spent two weeks in the tropical heat in sundresses and swimsuits with red and blue Xs and Os from a Sharpie pen that resembled odd, almost satanic-looking tattoos. I was self-conscious at first, but the fun quickly overrode my vanity. And yes, I was pretty skinny and saggy from the inability to maintain a regular workout schedule, but I loved my new boobs, and who really cared if the rest of me was getting a little droopy—I was alive, energetic, and having fun.
Being prepared for bumps in the road
Things started going south eight months into the whole cancer saga, after what was supposed to be my final—and easiest—surgery to insert permanent implants. A few weeks later I began having fluid buildup that caused what we thought was a minor infection. It seemed to respond to antibiotics quickly, so my plastic surgeon again cleared me a few days early so I could go to Egypt. To be safe, however, he gave me a prescription for strong, emergency antibiotics, which became an essential in my travel kit—and may well have eventually saved my life.
I began feeling off the day before I was set to begin the long journey home from eight days in Cairo and sailing the Nile, so I began taking the antibiotics. I started feeling better within 24 hours, but on the descent of my 10-hour connecting flight from Paris to Salt Lake City, the pressure change caused the fluid in one of my breasts to swell painfully, to the point it felt like it might explode. I texted my doctor on landing. “Well, that’s weird,” was his immediate response, which was quickly followed with instructions to go straight to the emergency room upon arrival at home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The ER doctor was able to drain the fluid and send me home, but that turned out to be just the beginning of another eight months of ups and downs that earned me the title “mystery patient.”
Just a few months after my return from Egypt, the infection returned, sending me to the hospital for five days with sepsis. And after yet another surgery to clear the infection and insert new implants, I delayed a planned small-ship sailing to the remote Marquesas for four months, only to have the infection flare up again a week into the sailing. I immediately tapped into my emergency antibiotics, but after my temperature spiked to over 102, the doctor aboard ordered me off the ship at the next stop and onto a flight to Papeete.
The writer convalescing at luxury resort the Brando in French Polynesia after a fever forced her to leave a South Pacific sailing.
Photo by Brian Fitzgerald
Flexibility is key
By the next morning, my fever had broken, and I was feeling better, so I asked about staying on board. But the next two stops were to islands with no air service and no doctors, and the doctor clearly wanted me off his ship so as to avoid any medical emergencies if my antibiotics stopped working. However, since our flight home wasn’t for a week, he advised that if my husband and I really wanted to try and continue our trip, he would only recommend us doing so as long as I stayed within easy reach of the modern, well-equipped hospital in Papeete.
Recovering in Tahiti appealed to me much more than rushing onto a nine-hour flight home. So we decided to make lemonade out of lemons. We spent three days at a beachfront guest house on Moorea, just a 40-minute ferry from Papeete, then three more at the Brando, a luxurious getaway on the late Marlon Brando’s private island that’s a quick hop away by private plane. The switch in plans and ability to add new experiences beyond the Marquesas ended up enhancing our overall travel experience—and proved to be the perfect locale for relaxing and healing.
Travel medical policies can only help so much
After my infection flared up in the Marquesas, my travel medical policy approved the ship doctor’s request for what they call a “medical evacuation” on a regularly scheduled commercial flight to Papeete. But because, in the end, we opted to stay in Papeete rather than have the insurance company buy us tickets to go home immediately, the company denied our claims for reimbursement for our flights from the Marquesas. To me, that seemed to defy common sense. But so much about insurance policies and their loopholes does. A year later, I am still trying to negotiate the appeals process.
Was it ultimately worth it?
While the last two years have been among the most difficult of my life, they were also among the best, thanks to responsive doctors who embraced my enthusiasm for travel while also being honest when they thought I was pushing the limits. Since finally (hopefully) kicking my infection this summer, I’ve had hiccup-free trips to Iceland, Kenya, Peru, and the Great Lakes. Currently, I am sailing from Buenos Aires to Uruguay, the Falklands, Chile, and Ushuaia—but, as always, with two bottles of emergency antibiotics in my bag and my always thankfully very responsive surgeon’s cell phone number at the ready.
