September 6, 2006
- Day 1 - Week 23 - NPR My Cancer
Many of you probably tune in to NPR and have heard a
series entitled, "My Cancer"---a commentary by Leroy
Sievers who has been diagnosed with lymphoma cancer.
His commentary today struck a familiar chord---one
that I have observed in my own vicarious cancer
journey. In case you missed it, let me excerpt it
for you. You can find this commentary and prior ones
at
www.npr.org/mycancer
"It's a lot like being trapped on a roller coaster.
A really good one with lots of twists and turns and
huge drops---the kind that make your stomach turn
over. "It," in this case, is life with cancer. And
the chemo makes your stomach turn over, too, but
that's a different issue.
In some ways, the life of a cancer patient becomes
predictable. You learn the rhythm of the chemo. The
first day, five hours hooked up to a machine pumping
poison into your arm----that's the start of the
cycle. The third day, that's the first big drop on
this ride. That's when the side effects hit hard.
The nausea in the morning that you just have to
fight through. The fatigue and so on.And then it
gets better over the next couple of days. The second
week is easier, and the off? That's a little bit of
heaven.
But then every once in a while, they change the
ride. New drops, new twists, new fears. That's the
ride I went on a few weeks ago. We thought
everything was going fine. I was down to just one
drug, with fewer side effects, and we thought that
would hold the tumors in place. But it didn't work.
In just a short time, the cancer grew and new scans
showed a new danger: a tumor on my spine. That's one
of those drops that makes your stomach turn over.
So I'm back on the original chemo with something
added: a new drug that shows some real promise---it
might actually shrink the tumors. We won't know for
a while, not until I take it for a couple of cycles
and we do new scans.
As much as the twists and turns of this ride
affect you physically, the ups and downs play havoc
with your emotions too. You look for hope where you
can find it. You brace yourself for bad news. But
when it comes, it still hits harder than you were
prepared for.
When you can, you smile and reassure everyone in
your life that the ride isn't too bad. Other times
you can only admit that the last drop really got to
you.
After a while, you forget what it was like to not
be on the ride----that life on solid ground is over,
at least for now. Your ticket is for a truly wild
ride, and there's really no way to get off.
And no one else, as much as they want to, as much as
they may need to, no one else can really ride along
with you. They can watch; they can be supportive.
But when you're up there on top of the ride, looking
down on that huge drop in front of you, you're the
only one in the car.
Well, Leroy, I think I can understand and appreciate
what you are saying and how you are feeling. It
makes me terribly sad, however, that in the end, you
feel you are "the only one in the car".
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