It hits us all at some point. Someone we love gets cancer. And as we get older, its distance from our reality shrinks. It's not just an old grandparent, or a friend's mother. Suddenly we can taste it and feel it and we fear it, and the world is a different color, and you look around wondering whether we're all afraid of it, in the same way you sometimes look around and wonder if someone walking down the street is the love of your life and you'll never even know them.
Mortality is not pretty. We ignore it most of the time - when we go downhill skiing, changing the song on our ipod while driving, every time we step on an airplane. We believe in percentages and our own invincibility. Flying is safer than driving. Breast cancer is better than pancreatic cancer. Bullshit. Bullshit.
My friend was sick. Thought it was sciatic nerve issues, took painkillers, far too busy to see a doctor. Months passed. Eventually she had some relief from her daily duties, and saw a doctor, and for two weeks they unsuccessfully treated the supposed sciatic nerve issue. No improvement, more tests.
Here's a thought - if the fruit they have to use to demonstrate the size of the tumor contains the word "melon," things are bad. Watermelon, especially. And yet that was what they finally found. A watermelon-sized tumor in the stomach, cancer in the uterus. Two months later, surgery behind her and 1/3 of the way through chemo, hair falling out, she is optimistic, planning to return to work in the spring. We'll see. I feel an impotent frustration, each mile between New England and L.A. feeling long and heavy.
How many times have we heard "she wasn't feeling well, but she ignored it, and by the time they found the cancer, it was too late"? Don't wait. Don't let someone you love wait. Be pushy, obnoxious, and insistent.
It's a tired topic without happy answers. Or maybe it's a unifier, a reminder that we are all frail and fallible and scared. On days like this, everything I do and think is done and thought differently. I see the faces of strangers and wonder what struggles they have, I see the faces of friends and feel a swell of gratitude for their kindness. And today I send my heart to my friend in California, she who has spent years teaching, listening, guiding, consoling, and giving. May mercy find you and may your good health return.
