INTERVIEW: Sarah King on Picking Up The Pieces From Her Cancer Diagnosis
Just when Sarah King though she was at the point she needed to be, well, it all went down. King release her album When it All Goes Down on March 29. Three days later, her doctor confirmed the worst: she had thyroid cancer, with tumors on her lymph nodes and one on the thyroid itself. All of King’s plans for the album came to a screeching halt. The prognosis is good, and King will be giving her final performance before her surgery and recovery at the Grand Point North Festival in Burlington, VT this Saturday the 27th. King spoke with us about how she’s hanging in there, what she’s going to do with her time off, and the considerations we should all take for artists with chronic illness and disabilities.
This is a loaded question, but how are you doing?
Right now I feel like I’m doing okay because I’m doing what I call reaching peak mental avoidance. I am pretending that everything is fine. I fully reverted back to childhood and I’m only doing things that I love to do right now, which is basically ride horses and sing songs. And I’ve decided that I don’t have time to do anything else. I have four and a half weeks until surgery. and I just don’t know what it’s going to look like afterwards. I’ll have plenty of time to sit on the couch and process my feelings and emotions.
I was definitely a bigger mess in the beginning. Never in my life has a doctor call me back so quickly. It was hard because I got the diagnosis at the exact same time as I dropped the record. It came out on Friday and that following Monday I was in the doctor’s office, literally reading a review on Brooklyn Vegan and the the doctor walks in and says the C word.
I was told that the prognosis was looking good. What will treatment look like?
The prognosis is good for thyroid cancer, as long as it is the one that they think it is because there’s four different types. I won’t have chemo treatment or anything like that. However, my case is fairly advanced. So it’s not just in my thyroid. It has already spread into the lymph nodes of my neck. The good news is lymph node spread with thyroid cancer is not typically scary, like with breast cancer.
But for me as a singer, having a bunch of extra crap in my neck is how we found out about it in the first place. Over the last year year and a half when I would sing after about 20 minutes or so, I would felt a pressure in my neck.
None of the tumors are very large — there’s just A bunch of them. So when I’m forcing a lot of air and vibration through a tiny area of my, of my body, I would just be aware of that and feel it. Because my cancer has spread into my lymph nodes, I’m going to need multiple surgeries: one surgery to take out all the lymph nodes, and then the additional surgery to actually take the thyroid itself out.
The first surgery will be on July 31st, then the next surgery six to eight weeks later. Hopefully, I will be able to perform again three to four months after that, in early 2025. I will need radiation treatment. So I get to take like some big old radioactive drinks and pills and stuff like that and hide out from humanity for a week or two.
So much of When It All Goes Down is about survival and getting through a toxic relationship. Do you feel like any of the songs have changed for you?
A lot of those songs feel like past Sarah wrote them for future Sarah. Even the title track was inspired by doctors not listening to women, me specifically a couple of years ago with some other issues. The song has definitely taken on a new meaning to be your own advocate and stand up for yourself, stronger than you ever knew. It has been very difficult for me to get through live in the few shows that I have played since since my diagnosis.
I’m going to need like three months of vocal rehab and therapy because all the muscles that are getting sliced and diced, we got to get everything working again. We got to get everything back up to speed. My whole entire career is being put on hold. And so, yeah, I’m like, this is, yeah, like kind of, kind of a problem, kind of a big interruption. So.
And the album has been gaining so much momentum.
It feels like Sisyphus rolling the boulder, right? That’s another reason I want to be so open about everything, because the industry, just wants new, better, next. So for me to release this record and then not tour, do jack shit for promotion because I’m busy trying to, like, live my life and not die, it’s like I released it and then just disappeared. If I didn’t explain why I am disappearing, I have a feeling it would take me a long, long time to build back up everything that I had already built up.
But maybe it’ll even help me like find some new, new listeners, a new audience, you know, like there’s apparently a festival put on by an org called We Got This that’s by and for cancer survivors. When I’m cleared to sing again, I want to talk to them about being involved because, like it or not, “cancer patient” is now part of my identity. And so I want to show up for that new community of mine as well.
How can we support you as fans and members of the queer country community?
Keep listening and keep checking on me and keep telling me that I’m awesome and you haven’t forgotten about me! I have a whole entire page on my website right now. Continuing to stream my music on Spotify or Bandcamp shows that there is still continued interest in the music.
I have a little Amazon wishlist with things ranging from like songwriting books to stuffed animals, because I’m a five year old. Buying merch, because I have boxes and boxes and boxes of all the merch I got to take on the road this year. Keep telling your friends keep sharing the songs!
Sarah King’s “temporary farewell” performance will be at the Grand Point North Festival in Burlington, VT on Saturday, July 27.
