The words are hard enough to hear..”You have cancer.”
Then comes the reaction. How do you handle it? Do you remember what you did when those words changed your life?
First you cry…then you cry again. Between those tears, your thoughts cycle through your life at lightning speed. The memories come in no particular order. You don’t start at childhood and follow year after year. Speaking from a care giver’s viewpoint, I jumped ahead. I thought about the future and what Leroy would be facing as a cancer patient. All the rough days of treatment. How his active life of covering the stories of the world would stop. His new world would be very small and I worried how he would accept that new world.
He said he first wondered if he would die quickly and when the first set of doctors told him he only had a few months to live, he wondered how he could manage wrapping up a life like his in such a short time. I was surprised to hear that from him, because once I got over my first cry, I jumped immediately to the “They’re wrong and we’re going to fight this together.” But we did cry together. It was such a crushing blow to our world.
I imagine it would be the same for just about everyone.
This is on my mind tonight as I think about my neighbor who is trying to manage this news with strength and courage. She’s been through a difficult surgery already and will face more challenges soon. She’s strong one minute and not so strong the next…it’s hard walking this balance beam.
“You have cancer.” Words that can change a world.
December 19, 2011 @ 7:58 pm
I didn’t mean to say the surgery shows; I meant to say the MRI shows….
December 19, 2011 @ 7:57 pm
My friend the beautiful artist T. got the results of her most recent MRI today. (She has glioblastoma.) After surgery, after two heavy-duty regimens of chemo, the surgery shows a new tumor growth, in the area of the brain controlling motor functions. She immediately began tonight a new round of chemo, preparing to go to Duke again after Christmas. The news was devastating; even those she and her husband, all of us, knowing what glio is like (it’s a cancer in my family), knew new tumor growth was possible, the results are so painful to accept.
I cried a lot this afternoon. The fear of what this cancer exacts never goes away.
Please hold T. in your prayers and Christmas blessings. She has that spirit Al speaks of but is honest, too, that she’s struggling to maintain hope.
December 20, 2011 @ 4:39 pm
Hope that Duke can offer some further treatment. Glio is a devastating cancer as we know. Just went through it with one of my cousins….surgery, chemo and radiation…nothing slowed it down. Was gone in less than 6 months. Will pray that T via her treatments will have some quality time.
December 20, 2011 @ 9:35 pm
Thank you, Al. You remain a rock and it bears the word HOPE.
December 19, 2011 @ 7:02 pm
Amen. In our stronger moments we all know “just how we would deal with it” but when it becomes a reality, all of this posturing is irrelevant. We react from our gut and our soul and the reactions are quite varied. It is often not just a single reaction and it is over. It often continues and manifests itself at odd times triggered by everyday events. There is no appropriate way to react. There is no right way. There is only your way and your way may vary by day or week or month or event or person encountered or each doctor visit or each scan or each infusion. The cancer world is a very confusing and emotional place to be. Sometimes just when you’ve gained your balance, another bit of news comes along to upset the steadiness and predictability that you just acquired. Uncertainty would be a word I would use while describing the cancer world. The uncertainty seems to be the only predictable part. In spite of the uncertainty and the lack of predictability, each person finds a way to cope. The human spirit refuses to quit or give up. Each of us has seen glimpses of that spirit. It fuels each person to do more, to endure more and to fight longer, harder than the doctors could have ever imagined. The indomitable human spirit shines through the darkness to let each of us know that it is there and is within each of us should we ever need to call upon it.
While many lose their fight and we weep for our loss, we should take away all of the good that we’ve witnessed…the indomitable human spirit shines even as the darkness closes in and the beam becomes narrower. We’ve walked the beam. We’ve fallen off BUT we’ve gotten back on. So let us reachout to those in need, grasp their hand and say “let me help you, I’ve walked this beam before”.