About Cancer and Our Mortality (not a knitting topic)

Today's post is going to be a little sad, a little philosophical. As I was going back to my office this afternoon, I received a phone call from a friend from the cancer support group I used to go to. She was back in the hospital, because this time the cancer has gone to her brain. I reacted with shock and dismay and with tears, not because I was surprised that this had happened, but that it had happened so soon.

My friend is 41, separated, and a mother of two children, ages 2 and 4. Her breast cancer was way way more invasive than mine, and her doctors had told her not to expect to live to see her oldest child graduate from elementary school. She was diagnosed when her baby was 5 months old. There was a lump in her breast and her baby would not nurse from it. At first, doctors told her it was a plugged milk duct, but she insisted on having it checked. It was cancer.....a very invasive type of cancer. She went through chemo to shrink the tumor and then had the operation to remove both her breasts and then chemo again. Throughout all this her husband and his family tortured her mentally and he taunted her when she wanted to make plans for the future regarding the children. This uncaring idiot would tell her: "What does it matter? You're not going to be around here anyway." Her mother-in-law tried to take her babies away from her, claiming she was an unfit mother because she was sick.

My friend has alienated so many people because of her demanding attitude, but I've seen through all of that.........I've realized that she is demanding and needy because she is scared and she is fighting for her life and she is fighting to live long enough to see her babies grow up. It doesn't matter whose toes she steps on, it doesn't matter what people think about her. All that matters to her is that she spends every single moment that she can with her babies; all that matters it that she lives to see them grow up.

It just breaks me up.

February is a very sad month for me.....as a cancer survivor (I celebrated my 2nd anniversary on February 6th), I count myself very lucky that I have thus far been able to move forward with my life and have every expectation of living to a very ripe old age. But February 2003 was when I had my operation to remove the cancer. February 2004 was when two of my friends from my cancer support group died (and these are young women in their 30s) and another woman who had breast cancer ended up being diganosed with some type of leukemia on top of the breast cancer because of the chemo that was used. And now February 2005 brings me the terrible news about my friend Rochelle. My understanding is that when the cancer goes to the brain, then that is the beginning of the end. My friend Debbie died less than 7 months after the cancer moved to her brain. I want Rochelle to live. I want her to raise her children and to see them grow up, meet their first boyfriend and girlfriend, survive their adolescence and be there when they graduate from high school, from college. She has suffered so much with her terrible and domineering inlaws and her weak and ineffectual and drug-addicted husband. I want for her what she wants for herself: to live.

Life is so fragile. I realize that we cannot take anything for granted. When I was lying in bed during the months of my chemotherapy, I had plenty of time to think. I decided that when I finished my treatment, I was going to embrace life, to be bold, to live life on my own terms. After all, what did I have to lose? Now, a little more than a later, have I done that? No, I haven't. I've needed to re-establish my life, to start over again, to become financially secure once more. I've had to conform, live by someone else's rules, go through the motions of living. My one nod to living life on my own terms has been to pick knitting as my hobby and to pour money into this hobby, even though the money could be better spent elsewhere. But on all other fronts, I've lived my life governed by almost the same fears that haunted me before: making sure my kids were okay and going to school, making sure my job was secure. Also, I've had the additional task of making sure that I stay healthy.

I want more out of life. Life isn't all about work, is it? If not, what is it, then?

I hurt so much right now because someone I know and care about is fighting for her life--fighting to LIVE--with every ounce of her being. And there is nothing I can do to help her. Nothing anyone can do to help her. It frightens me that there is so much about our life that we cannot control. So what do we do? Do we rail about this lack of control? Do we scream at an uncaring God? Or do we (I) accept this as part of the cycle of life? Not all of us are meant to live to a ripe old age, just as not all of us are meant to be mothers or fathers, and not all of us are meant to live a relatively happy and carefree life in an industrialized country. There is so much suffering in this world. This inequity, this diversity, of life is not fair in a way, and I suppose there is a meaning to it, but I just don't see it right now.

After having been sick for a long time, I do not fear death. But, is death a release from the pain and suffering of life? Should I be happy that someone I care about is perhaps close to death and perhaps close to the end of her suffering? What do I do? I've promised to sit with her in the hospital this week after work......and to visit her at home when she goes home. But it is difficult for me....I can't stand to see her suffer......Perhaps it is selfish of me, but I do not think I have it in me to watch another friend die. I don't want to go through it again. I stopped going to my cancer support group after last February because I did not want to become attached to more women who were dying.

One of the physicians at one of the hospitals I work with is an oncologist. Last February, I was sitting in my office crying because of my friend Debbie's death. This oncologist, Dr. V, called about a work matter. He sensed that I was upset and asked me about it. I felt that it was okay to tell him because as an oncologist, he worked with dying patients all the time. I thought he would be sensitive to my feelings of grief. I was shocked when he told me that he did not allow patients to say express anything negative or to give voice to their fears. He said it did not have a place in his office. He urged me to get up and move on. I really don't know if that was the right way to deal with my grief.

Please, if you pray, say a prayer for Rochelle or send good strong happy vibes in her direction. Thank you.