Life Changes Fast

Life changes fast. It’s one of those things that we understand intellectually but don’t fully grasp until something big happens. Those of us in CancerLand know this. 

We have at least one memory of a perfectly fine day—until the phone rang, or until the doc came back into the room, or until a nurse said, “The doctor would like you to stay for a few more minutes.”

 

Many years ago, on September 11^th in 2001 we all got it.  Then again in 2005 with the Indonesian Tsunami. Then in 2012 with the shooting at Sandy Creek Elementary School.

 

Those incidents were huge, but now they seem to come faster: a shooter, a bomb, a natural disaster. But the aftereffect doesn’t stay with us as long each time. It’s as if there is a half-life of consciousness after having a couple of these “Life is short” experiences.

 

That is true in CancerLand as well—now we brace ourselves for the next news, the next scan, the next colonoscopy or mammogram. We have quiet, whispered conversations with ourselves that go like this, “OK, if this is bad news I’m going to go to Paris first.” Or “If this is bad news I won’t tell anyone for a week—I have to sort it out myself.”

We know that bad things happen in the greater world too. 

We keep reading about how life makes these sudden shifts for other people.

 

We know it happens more frequently in other countries—and in places where people don’t look and sound like us. But when it happens in Colorado, Connecticut, Arizona or Ohio-- places where the skin tones and consonants are more like ours, we get it again, and fast. 

 

As much as we believe that life follows rules like, “What you put in is what you’ll get out,” we are shown again and again that planning denies life’s absolute uncertainty.

 

Your life will change in an instant, in a New York minute, in the blink of an eye, and on a dime. 

 

I’ve seen it happen in the lives of people I love. A friend lost her home and everything in it--burned to the ground. All gone: checkbook, toothbrush, computer, family Bible. Not even a pencil left to tally all she lost. Her family was safe, and for that we say, “Thank God”, but really…

 

Another friend was crossing the street. The light was green. She remembers stepping into the intersection, then--days later--regaining consciousness in the ICU badly broken.

 

Another friend was taking a quick bike ride before work, a car turned left, she was in the blind spot. So beautiful, so young, so gone. A family devastated.

 

What about the to-do lists in their handbags? Their responsibilities at work? And the library books they always returned on time?

 

Twice I had to suddenly look at my life in a new way. Both times doctors holding clipboards were my wake-up call.

 

I’d always measured myself by my work, but that changed quickly. Someone asked me, “What about your career?” and I answered, meaning to be flip but surprising myself with the truth, “I don’t have a career, I have a life.”

 

That insight had incubated over time by too many funerals and too many days in Intensive Care waiting rooms watching family members die.  That was an incredible wisdom school—and in many ways a gift—but that’s a school with a very steep tuition.

 

So, in the midst of the shootings and terrorism, and this COVID-19 virus gobbling human lives like Pac Man, there may be a bit of buried treasure. 

While we can’t control everything that happens to us, we do get to make choices. We can love others, we can allow ourselves to be loved, and we can say Yes much more than we say No.

 

One day it might be that lone package on the train, or a screech of tires, or a fever and a cough that won’t quit. Or that call-back from the doc. Knowing we might die can paralyze us or it can liberate us.

 

Life changes fast. So, what do we do about that?

 

I vote for living it. Starting right now.

 

 

Do You Worry About Cancer Coming Back?

You may have discovered this: Most of your role as a cancer caregiver is, naturally, doing the daily care of your loved one—and of course, that brings up a lot of worry about that person. But this week a conversation with a friend brought me up short.

I was asking about her husband who has cancer and we talked about the usual—treatments and surgeries and money and family—all the parts of life that are touched by cancer. But then she said, “There’s something else”, and she looked very uncomfortable. So, I waited

and she said, “I’m worried about me.”

“We’re both worried that his cancer is going to come back”, she went on, “and we do talk about that, but what I can’t tell him is that I’m not sure that I can go through this again.”

Oh, I thought, “Oh, she is voicing the taboo.”

All of this I write about being a caregiver and dealing with the logistics of medical care, and the money, and the sex, but maybe I was missing what you might most need to talk about: the scary, uncomfortable, painful and awful-- often secret--truth, that we do not want to go through this again.

Part of it is that as caregivers we are in a secondary role: The patient is the lead and you, the caregiver, are the supporting actor. But we also get caught in our own “saint” game and can get trapped by being helpful and loving and we fall head over heels into the expectations that we will: roll with the punches; go with the flow; do whatever it takes.

But then, after the first round of cancer, after you come back to the surface, you might find yourself thinking, “I do not know if I can do this again.” 

You are not alone. Part of the stress is the timing. When cancer comes the first time we really don’t know a dam thing about what’s about to happen.

We read the pamphlets and go to support groups but we are caught up in the rapid current of cancer and treatment. We mostly just do everything because there isn’t time not to. The pace of care and the newness and the scariness and the constant adrenaline pushes us along. 

But after a period of time, maybe after you’ve had about a year out of CancerLand, a kind of subtle terror creeps in: What if cancer comes back? Then what? Now you know, now you have a sense of this exhaustion and fear, and in that way it’s harder because the adrenaline of shock isn’t there to help us. And it is also true that there is less help—from family and friends--when cancer goes from crisis to chronic.

So, I told my friend that she is not alone. And you are not alone if you had this worry. I have been there and truthfully, I still go there: “Could I do it again?” I probably would, and so would you. But having that secret feel like shame just makes it all so much harder.

No, I don’t want cancer to come back—for his sake and for mine. You don’t either. But I don't want you to have another layer of pain because you hate what cancer did to your good life.