The diagnosis of breast cancer, or any cancer, is more than a curious detour that life-altering experiences of life tend to represent when retrospectively measured in the spacious distance of time’s wider perspective.
In the category of life-altering experiences, the immediate and long-lasting changes cancer bring do not diminish over time. No, the changes settle in with a determined persistence. After learning I had cancer, I wondered how long I had left to live. One of the side-effects of struggling with my own mortality is how unsure I became about tomorrow. A surly death hangs around like an obnoxious unwelcome relative on the doorstep of your mind in ways it never did before and hope takes its own sweet time regaining any place at the table in your concept of contemplating the simplest of futures.
I begin to wonder if hope is ever going to grow strong again. If hope will ever sit down and pull up a chair, when one day it dawns on me that hope is back. I cannot pinpoint the exact moment of hope’s return, but there it is in the plans, in the anticipation of things to come, in the regained belief in tomorrows.
Hope takes two years to make its unannounced triumphant return, sashaying into the room as if hope had never been absent. There is hope throwing all the curtains open, filling the room with light, settling in and flashing its smile of brilliant reassurance. I am not about to quarrel about the abandonment. I am estatic at Hope’s return to quibble over departure and arrival times.
And then shortly after Hope’s return and our pursuing merriment, my father calls to tell me he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The statistics report that one out of two men and one out of three women will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime. But statistics are not personal and numbers a cold abstract, until you realize people all around you are becoming the numbers. Then it is very personal indeed. This seems such an unacceptable reality — our collective failure of current ability to heal that which seeks to destroy us. Whatever we are doing to heal is not working. Cancer is at epidemic levels today. Whatever is happening around us, is working against us and we need to investigate the what and why creating the epidemic.
Hope is still here, however, she does sleep late.
Next: Cancer survivors: cancer scare for eight year cancer survivor
