Five months have passed since my last post . . . and while there was plenty of inspiration around me, I had trouble finding the motivation to write. The ideas kept coming, but the translation to this blog didn’t happen. I became stuck . . . should every one of my posts end on a positive note? Should I always triumph due to my survivorship?
I wish to inspire and translate to all my fellow cancer survivors with victorious stories that continue in my everyday life . . . don’t let the disease get you down! But what about the days that it does get you down? The days when I don’t want to fill out yet another medical questionnaire . . . have you ever been hospitalized or had any surgeries? The days when I get chastised by an observant citizen in a parking lot questioning the nature of my handicapped parking. The days when a fill-in doctor questions the validity of a referral and orders unnecessary tests due to his inexperience with cancer survivors. The days that I’m too tired to pick up my drop foot and carry the badge of survivor. Or simply the days the others with cancer don’t survive.
When I was in high school, I was the youngest member of Partners-In-Healing, a cancer support group at our local hospital. I was trained to offer an ear and my time to cancer patients. One night, I entered the room of an elderly man with lung cancer. He held out his hand to me and I grasped it in mine. The tears rolled down his cheeks while he detailed to me that the doctors thought he didn’t have much time, but all he wanted to do was make it to his 75th birthday in three weeks. He told me that I reminded him of his granddaughter, although she didn’t come to visit him often. I remained in the room for an hour – holding his hand and watching Jeopardy – but I don’t remember how I ended up leaving. I sat in the waiting room hysterically crying . . . he didn’t deserve this disease – nobody does. I don’t know what happened to that man because I never went back to look to see if his name was erased from the wipe board. And, paralyzed by that experience, I never volunteered for Partners-In-Healing again.
For every time I rise, I remember the times I fell. This is for those days . . .
