Where do you fit?
Looking at the ledger, where does your name fall?
It’s tough living in the real world, especially when you have cancer. There’s no room for hope there. It’s take the facts, digest them, come to grips with looking around the bend and deal with it. There’s no room for the human spirit to weigh-in either. Realists face their diagnosis and many times, die quickly. They just give up. They don’t see the value in having hope. It prolongs the inevitable and they’ve pretty much lived their lives in the “matter-of-fact” world….having cancer is no different. We all have known people like this. They were high functioning, go-getter’s in their healthy lives, but handed a crisis like cancer, they just can’t handle it. I’ve seen it happen and it’s the most helpless feeling in the world, watching someone just give-up. Reality….it’s a downer in cancer world.
The body listens to the signals of the spirit.
When there’s hope and the will to live, the heart and soul hear the bell and rise to the occasion. It’s time to fight. It’s time to beat back the attack. What the body hears inside, we see on the outside. Our loved one rallies….and we rally right along with them. We keep the positive vibes flowing…that ‘s what our job is, right? We feed off one another and it’s a powerful combination.
I think this community is heavy on hope. We’ve seen what it can do. Hope is the strongest medicine available in cancer. It lives in the oncologists who treat cancer. Why else would they pick this kind of practice? It lives in every researcher in every cancer lab in the world. If they didn’t add a healthy dose of hope to each and every lab experiment, we wouldn’t have any progress in treating the disease. It lives in every care giver too. It is the heart beat of caring for our loved ones.
That leaves the patient. The single most important soul who’s name goes on that ledger. Maybe, when cancer comes to call, it’s the one time when reality gets a pass.
Hope is the only way to go.
December 20, 2011 @ 8:52 pm
Hope is what has gotten me up all these years. Hope I will remain a NED, Hope that I’ll make a difference, Hope that someone in that basement will find the key and shut off the carnage cancer brings.
Hope is what’s good for the patient, the survivor, the caregiver, nurses and doctors.
Without Hope how could any of us carry on?
December 20, 2011 @ 7:01 pm
I believe that HOPE is real! I know, I know…the stats, right. But I choose HOPE every time. It is a spiritual fuel. It is powerful. Does it remove the facts…NO! But it makes life’s journey with cancer worth the fight. Does HOPE change the outcome? HOPE combined with a fighting spirit and good medicine that works for a specific patient and his/her cancer can sometimes make the difference. HOPE, to me, is positive. Some will say, it is just unrealistic and builds the patient up for a huge letdown when the drugs stop working and the tumors begin to grow once again. To that I say, HOPE is still a worthy emotion. What I have learned after 10 years in this fight is that there is no real predictor of success. It remains trial and error. So for me, HOPE is still something I can cling to, not unrealistically, but knowing that miracles do happen every day in the cancer world. So, why not today!!!! Statistically, my friend Cathy should not be with us today. She has defied all of the odds, all of the predictions and she continues her fight full of HOPE, realistic HOPE ’cause she has seen the other side. Always choose HOPE. It is good for your soul!!