The Day I Couldn't Sing: Rock Star Andrew McMahon on Surviving the Identity Crisis of Cancer

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Today, I am thrilled to have the brilliant singer songwriter Andrew McMahon with me, and even more thrilled to have his extraordinary wife, Kelly. Andrew's musical career was taking off like a rocket when cancer appeared like a thunderbolt. We're going to talk about the journey and what it's like to live through a life and death experience out loud. Stay tuned. Hello, I'm Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and welcome to Cancer Straight Talk. We're bringing together national experts and patients fighting these diseases to have evidence-based conversations. Our mission is to educate and empower you and your family members to make the right decisions and live happier and healthier lives. For more information on the topics discussed here, or to send us your questions, please visit us at mskcc.org/podcast. Andrew McMahon started making music in the fourth grade. By high school, he was recording with the band, Something Corporate, and had three full length studio records, two live DVDs and a live album. By twenty-two, Andrew McMahon was experiencing a success so powerful, it was tricky enough to manage, but then comes a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. How do you manage that? And how do your relationships survive? How does he survive? In a sink or swim moment, Andrew chose to swim.

"Swim" by Andrew McMahon:

You gotta swim. Swim for your life. Swim for the music that saves you when you're not so sure you'll survive. You gotta swim. And swim when it hurts. The whole world is watching. You haven't come this far to fall off the earth.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Fans may recognize his song "Swim," a tune which expresses that moment so perfectly. Welcome, Andrew and Kelly McMahon. I'm grateful to call you both my friends.

Andrew McMahon:

Hi there. Good to see you.

Kelly McMahon:

So good to be here. Thanks for having us.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Thank you so much for being here. So Andrew, take me back. You're twenty-two, the world is watching, you've just recorded your brand new album under the moniker Jack's Mannequin, and suddenly you're here in New York City, you're on tour, you get a sore throat, and your life is about to change.

Andrew McMahon:

For me at that point, I felt pretty indestructible. Suddenly it was getting exciting. You know, a new label got interested and signed the band and we were on our first tour, and I was doing my music exactly how I wanted to at that point. I felt really powerful. And then all of a sudden, I couldn't sing. There was about two weeks’ worth of symptoms that were a combination of fatigue, needing to sleep a lot, all these things. I didn't go to the doctor – cause why would I do that – until finally I couldn't do a show. I had to cancel a show and I'd never canceled a show in my life. And I went to my voice doctor of all people and he took one look at me and he said, "Something's not right here," and took my blood. And the very next day, more than a dozen phone calls to my voicemail – while I was finishing my record in the studio in New York – came in and I was in a hospital within hours and they were pretty sure what I had at that point, which was leukemia.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Kelly, can you talk about how that moment for you and how you played the role of caregiver there?

Kelly McMahon:

Sure. It was just trying to be there and be a calming force in a really scary, uncertain moment. So I feel like between his mom, his sister and I, like, we all had our own roles as caregivers, and my focus was on making Andrew feel as loved and calm as possible. Like I would lay down with him in the hospital bed all the time. I was really focused on like physical touch and just making him feel, I don't know, not so scared I guess.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

You both were so young. Andrew, could you talk a little bit of what that felt like at such a young age to suddenly be in the hospital and sort of not believe that it was actually happening at the time, I imagine?

Andrew McMahon:

Well, I think even internally I knew that I was moving towards some disaster or another. It was just hair on fire, juggling two bands and all of this. It was like the peak of that sort of frenetic lifestyle. There was this strange sense of calm, honestly. It seems like an odd reaction, but for me it felt like all of a sudden I was given permission to stop this wild moment. And so I relaxed into it pretty quickly. It wasn't until it started getting much scarier and I really started feeling the disease in my body, and those symptoms of that getting more extreme and then obviously getting the chemo, that the scariness of it all really became a lot more clear. But in the initial couple of weeks, I just sort of strapped into the peaceful sort of warrior mode.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Kelly, you talk about your relationship with Andrew and how it kind of went through these phases. You had the three different Andrews: the healthy Andrew, the sick Andrew, and then this sort of post-chemo treatment, living with this sort of nightmare that you both had. Can you discuss that a little bit and how you were able to pivot in those different phases?

Kelly McMahon:

That's a good question. When you start dating someone, when you're eighteen and twenty, you are expecting each other to change and grow over your relationship. It always felt a little bit like there was a core Andrew that I knew of and each version of him had something, you know, there might be something that was a little bit more turned up. So like when he was in the hospital, like his very Zen "calm in a crisis" was really turned up. And then after the hospital in recovery mode, his impulsivity, kind of mercurial part of his personality was really turned up. So I think it was always waiting to see where everything settled, I think. I really felt like I was constantly struggling to know when to kind of say, "Hey, this is getting to be a little too much," or "This feels a little unhealthy," and when to give him the space to process something that was really complex.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Andrew, in that hospital room and even in retrospect, you talk about the importance of the relationships during this part of the cancer journey. And you definitely have a lot of strong women in your corner. My bestie and your sister, Emily, obviously Kate, and Kelly, and your mom. Can you talk about what was going on there?

Andrew McMahon:

Everybody rallied, I think. I come from a big family. I'm the youngest of five kids and we've always been bound tightly in one way or another, you know? In that particular moment, I was close enough to being a kid still. I had just left the house probably four years prior. We watched lots of movies and had lots of laughs, surprisingly. There was a whole side of that period of time that everybody thinks is just this dire battle, but you have so much time on your hands and we really did fill it with a lot of nourishing conversations and pass the time in a way that made it livable, and they were a huge part of that. Families all have their things and our family certainly had plenty of ours, and none of that really mattered in that moment. And any trauma or history kind of disappeared and we all just orbited in the moment and it was really quite beautiful.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

So you go through grueling chemo, you get that transplant. Let's talk about post-transplant. That survivorship, like we don't talk about that enough. And the rest of the world thinks, "Well, you're great. You're cured." And yet there's a lot of layers. When you lift up the hood, you're like, "Whoa, what just happened?" Kelly, what did you witness personally, again, being there the whole time after the treatment?

Kelly McMahon:

I saw someone who was struggling with a loss of confidence. He really struggled with his writing and just being able to be creative. And that was something that always came so easily to him, and so watching him struggle with that, and I think even maybe question if it was ever gonna come back was almost like two sides of the same coin. Like we could be out in public or out with friends and it would be just like care-free, wild, sometimes a little to the edge of partying. And then at home there would be these really down moments of him feeling very depressed. And it was really confusing for me because I didn't have any resources. In the hospital, we had the doctors, the nurses, I had his mom and his sister around. And then when we were home, it was just me and I didn't have any kind- no one even told me like, "Hey, there might be some things about this process that you might see." And I didn't really know how to help him or of myself cause I was also unpacking a very scary experience.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Absolutely. You just nailed it. And I think that really echoes to a lot of caregivers when they're home with either patients on active treatment or thereafter, and trying to figure it out, which can be terrifying.

Kelly McMahon:

Yeah, it was.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

And speaking of risks, you were doing a lot there, Andrew, I hear. Smoking a lot of pot and taking a lot of risks. You wanna share a little bit more on what you think that was all about?

Andrew McMahon:

There's addiction in the background of my family, so that I think when you grow up around that in general, there's always a fear there. I never went fully down that road of finding myself in a situation so bad I couldn't get myself out, you know? My drug of choice was pot, which growing up in Southern California, that felt like a pretty innocuous vice to adopt. But it certainly got to the point where it was just an all day, all night, you name it, I used it in some form or another. But it was just because I was running from myself. You know, Kelly, I think, made a good point – she didn't know if it was me or if it was the experience – and I'd argue it was both. You show up to cancer with who you are and you leave with some compromised version of who you are that you have to then rebuild and become a new you. And I just resisted that so much. And I operate in an industry that rewards living on that edge. And I think for a while it felt like, "Oh, this is fun. I'm reclaiming my life." But you're never going to be who you were before your sickness and that's okay. You can build it, and I've been so blessed to have built a life that I would not trade a million other lives for in my post-cancer. It took cracking that Pandora's box of what I had experienced and facing it. I used a million diversions to steer myself away from opening that vault, but once I did, things got a lot better.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Kelly, do you feel the same? As a caregiver when you were so involved, and having Andrew sort of be front and center for that entire time, where's there time for Kelly?

Kelly McMahon:

Yeah, definitely, and I think for a few reasons. You know, like when he got sick, I was planning on moving out to New York. That changed. We were up in LA. I had a job that I started there that I loved that I ended up leaving after a year. My professional life, I was just starting to explore and get started. That kept getting kind of changed around because of the circumstances of him being sick, which I didn't regret. It just was, you know, a fact of it. And so I felt like I had a hard time figuring out what I was supposed to do in LA, and I had a hard time figuring out what role to play as his caregiver. And as he seemed to get further down the hole, I was holding onto it a little too tightly and maybe trying to control it a little bit more, and really losing sight of who I was outside of my role of his wife. It really took us getting to a point, I think, of realizing that maybe I might have to not be with him for me really to start thinking about what I wanted in my life outside of just taking care of, you know, Andrew.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Absolutely. Andrew, let's talk about your memoir, "Three Pianos." You, kind of, really went there and shared a lot to the public, which was an incredibly powerful book. I must say, boy, do you have a way with words.

Andrew McMahon:

Thank you.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Really, really impressive.

Andrew McMahon:

It's a product of getting older for sure. I mean, I'll be 40 this summer. Having enough distance from the two really relevant life-changing traumas – having grown up around addiction and two, having survived this cancer – and in the midst of that, finding music and finding Kelly. I think I finally really was able to look back and have enough perspective to say like, "Oh, these are the most major events in my life." The pandemic presented this opportunity where I was gonna lose the way I love to make music, in a studio with my friend. And I said, "Well, maybe this is a really good moment to like reflect on how I've gotten to where I am." It was really tricky. It's a hard thing. Writing a book is hard, it turns out. And I love words and I love language and that's why in my music, the lyric is everything in these songs. The book became a way for me to be productive and creative during a really difficult time for the world, really. And our family, I think, needed to kind of go through that one extra layer of deep dive, you know?

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Yeah. There was one part of the book – not to pick on you, but Kelly, I wanna hear your thoughts on this – when you said, you know, sort of post-treatment and you were sort of at this moment where you're like, "I just need to take a trip by myself to Costa Rica." And Kelly was like, "Wait, wait... what?" And I could just tell you like, if I were Kelly at that point, like, "You need to take a trip to Costa Rica on your own?!" I'd love to hear from Kelly. Like, was that a moment for both of you?

Kelly McMahon:

I think for me, even prior to the Costa Rica trip, it started with a "I'm going on a road trip," you know? So it had already been, I don't know, a week or more of him being on a road trip, and then he called me and was, "And I'm also about to go to Costa Rica." It occurred to me, like, "Why am I the only one who has to hold everything down? You know, like I've been holding the house down. I'm here taking care of our dog. I'm doing all the responsible things and you always get to go off and do these things and I'm really sick of that dynamic." You know, I think that was the moment where I was just like, you know, "I don't like how this is, this pattern that we've built."

Andrew McMahon:

And to her credit, I left for that trip on a day's notice. There's always been an escapist in me. I was so lost at that moment and having such a hard time making music. I will never forget that call from Kelly when she was like, "Are you kidding me? You know, like you don't get to do this." It was an early moment where she was starting to find a way to speak up and say like, "You're not sick anymore. I can't be the one holding the bag." It took us a lot of time, but I question sometimes whether I'd still be around if it were not for her.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Well, speaking of somebody that we can thank for you being around, let's talk about your sister Kate, and how she literally saved your life.

Andrew McMahon:

Yes. You know, we grew up like twins even though we were a year apart. Kate and I were just like thick as thieves growing up. And yeah, it was just this miraculous thing. The odds of her being a match for my bone marrow transplant were, I think, 20% or less. And man, did I pull out a lotto ticket with that. And she also introduced me to Kelly for the record. Your blood really is more important than almost anything, you know. We pulled out a big win together, that's for sure.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Either one of you, can you talk to me about the importance of bone marrow donors? And then I really would love to hear about the Dear Jack Foundation.

Andrew McMahon:

I'm here. I'm living proof of the importance. We sign people up for the registry when I'm on tour. I saw this amazing woman speak. She made the point that, you know, when a person gets cancer, it's not just the person that gets cancer, it is the community around them, you know, and the community around those people. It reaches so far into the hearts of so many people. And so when you save somebody's life, you're saving more than one person. You're saving their family. You're saving their friends. And the power that I've seen from when we sign people up at the registry, and then get to have a donor meet their match and realize that through a simple act of signing up for a registry and then donating, you know, you have the power to change so many people's lives.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Absolutely. BeTheMatch.org. It's super simple. Just need a little bit of swab from the, what we call the buccal mucosa of the mouth, and that's it. You're put in a registry and you could potentially save a life. So I couldn't agree more. Can you talk to us about the Dear Jack Foundation and the AYA program, what that is?

Andrew McMahon:

I started the foundation because I had means, I had a platform to advocate from, and I had fans that were so passionate about the process. They were in the process with me. And I think a lot of people just didn't realize that people that young get that sick. We have one program called The Life List and it's effectively like a wish granting program. We look after people fifteen to thirty-nine in this adolescent and young adult bracket. We build out milestones, benchmarks, things to look forward to, whether it's taking a trip with your family or renting out a movie theater or meeting a sports hero, whatever it is, you know, things like that. But then we also are in constant communication, doing things to look after the families of those patients, their wellbeing in the long run through treatment.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Yeah, we have an AYA program at MSK and it's such an important patient population that really requires not only to understand the science of why these cancers are developing, but also the sort of spiritual, emotional, and other challenges that are unlike any other patient population.

Andrew McMahon:

Yeah. The other program that we started that I'm super proud of, I'll let Kelly talk about it largely because she was the inspiration for the program after so many years of it being Kelly having to really carry a lot of the weight for the two of us. I'd love to hear what you have to say about that, Kelly.

Kelly McMahon:

So one of the programs of the Dear Jack Foundation is called the Breathe Now Retreat. It's a three day retreat. We do it in different locations where we invite the survivor and their partner to come for a weekend of relaxation and also just enjoying and learning some techniques through yoga, healthy eating. We also have a professional there that helps couples have conversations about where the relationship is now after the treatments and how to find balance and find a way to move forward in a place that's not so rooted in the caretaker-patient dynamic, something where it's a little bit more even-footed. So it's really a place to find some new balance and to start looking forward in your relationship. The other part of it was to also give you some peers that had gone through the same thing. So when we were at this point, like twenty-five, it's not like we had other friends who had gone through this. And then the last part of it really was just to give a space on my side of things for the caretakers to come and be taken care of for a second.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

That's a beautiful thing.

“Cecilia And The Satellite” by Andrew McMahon

I'll keep you safe I'll keep you dry. Don't be afraid, Cecilia, I'm the satellite. And you're the sky.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

You’re both proud parents of a little girl named Cecilia. What are young couples like yourselves- how do you make it? Any recommendations on how folks can land on their feet like you both have?

Andrew McMahon:

Therapy.

Kelly McMahon:

I was gonna say, therapy.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Lots of it!

Andrew McMahon:

I mean, I should have started therapy when I was about eleven and I waited until I was around twenty-six maybe. I understand that not everything is for everyone, but I think if you're carrying something that you're having a hard time making peace with, there's just a lot of value in finding a place to put those things and to unpack them. It saved me in a million ways. And it saved us, I think, in a million ways. The only reason I ended up in therapy was because Kelly said she was gonna leave me if I didn't go. Sometimes it just takes a little jolt from somebody you love to tell you to wake up, and that was powerful for me.

Kelly McMahon:

Yeah, I think looking back on that period of time, it's really hard to know when the right time is to push someone and when to hold back. But I've started to learn that, at that period of time, it felt like Andrew's ship was about to sink. And I had to decide if I was, you know, "Am I gonna go down with this?" or "What's my role in this as well?" And I had to really face also that I was kind of helping him stay in that spot a little bit. I had to decide that I needed to change how I was doing things, and it was really scary cause I didn't know what he was gonna do with that, you know? But I had to risk saying something for things to get better, but it was a really scary moment cause I didn't know what that was gonna turn out to be. And I'm not sure if I had said that earlier if that would've been the same outcome.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Andrew and Kelly McMahon, I want to thank you both for being here, for your honesty. I have no doubt it will help our listeners and lots of people, so so grateful to you both. For those who haven't read the memoir, Andrew McMahon's "Three Pianos," it's outstanding.

Andrew McMahon:

Thanks Diane.

Kelly McMahon:

Thank you.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Thank you for listening to Cancer Straight Talk from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. For more information or to send us any questions you may have, please visit us at mskcc.org/podcast. Please help others find this helpful resource by rating and reviewing this podcast at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. These episodes are for you, but are not intended to be a medical substitute. Please remember to consult your doctor with any questions you have regarding any medical conditions. I'm Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes. Onward and upward.