Perhaps I'm an optimist
This past summer was my first "real" experience dealing with the grief of death. My grandfather passed away, and he was someone who I greatly admired and had spent a good deal of time with throughout my life. I can still get choked up just thinking about him never being around anymore, and the fact that there are no more memories of him to be made.
So it has been interesting for me recently to be around people dealing with death, and the possibility of death. My college roommate's mother is a reader of my knitting blog, and I have known both of them since my pre-teen years. She was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I have been reading the blogs of both mother and daughter for several months as they come to terms with the possibility of death and some of the odd and unforeseen emotions that are stirred up at random moments along the way. My current roommate has been considering the possibility that she will move back to Hawaii to care for her mother should her mother's remission not last.
Which brings me to today, when one of my friends called me at noon. I wasn't home and called later in the evening from work. She said it was no longer relevant, as she was going to ask for a ride home, as she really didn't want to be alone. I asked what was going on, and she told me that today she was feeling kind of down because she found out she has cancer.
"Yeah, that sucks...Likely to ruin anybody's day. So what kind have you got?"
It was a second opinion, and she is confident in her doctor, who is considered the best in his field in Chicago.
She has cervical cancer, which is in stage one, and prospects are very good--95% survival rate ....it's odd there isn't a better term for that percentage, one that doesn't sound so bleak, but "success" isn't really the relevant term...you couldn't even say it's a 95% Living-Happily-Ever-After-Rate as the looming possibility of re-occurrence, and the after effects of things like full-hysterectomies is never going to yield a "happily ever after"...anyhow, she is going in for surgery within a week, and then will have 3-5 weeks of being housebound and recovery before starting any radiation or chemo (which may not be necessary if nothing has spread further than the area being removed).
And all of this sounds horrible, right?
Well when we discussed it, I was anything but down. I found myself joking about how many socks can be knit during 3 weeks of bedrest, and how much chocolate we can bring her to eat if she doesn't return to her mother's in Detroit. I even discussed the fact that she should be...uh...enjoying sexual pleasures of all sorts...as much as possible for the week before surgery. We even joked about how much she wants to keep her ovaries because of how crappy it is to have major body organs removed and how un-fun hormone replacement is and how "yeah, like Oh MY Gawd, after my LAST sex-change operation, the hormone injections were like, THE WORST!"
Which leads me to think one of three things is true:
1. I use some sort of denial as a defense mech (possible, but not likely)
2. My subconscious feels it's most important to keep the person happy and positive
3. I am actually an optimist, and find the glass half full of all her innards instead of her body half empty of them. I mean, birth control and losing 10 lbs at one go? Isn't that a bargain?
So it has been interesting for me recently to be around people dealing with death, and the possibility of death. My college roommate's mother is a reader of my knitting blog, and I have known both of them since my pre-teen years. She was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I have been reading the blogs of both mother and daughter for several months as they come to terms with the possibility of death and some of the odd and unforeseen emotions that are stirred up at random moments along the way. My current roommate has been considering the possibility that she will move back to Hawaii to care for her mother should her mother's remission not last.
Which brings me to today, when one of my friends called me at noon. I wasn't home and called later in the evening from work. She said it was no longer relevant, as she was going to ask for a ride home, as she really didn't want to be alone. I asked what was going on, and she told me that today she was feeling kind of down because she found out she has cancer.
"Yeah, that sucks...Likely to ruin anybody's day. So what kind have you got?"
It was a second opinion, and she is confident in her doctor, who is considered the best in his field in Chicago.
She has cervical cancer, which is in stage one, and prospects are very good--95% survival rate ....it's odd there isn't a better term for that percentage, one that doesn't sound so bleak, but "success" isn't really the relevant term...you couldn't even say it's a 95% Living-Happily-Ever-After-Rate as the looming possibility of re-occurrence, and the after effects of things like full-hysterectomies is never going to yield a "happily ever after"...anyhow, she is going in for surgery within a week, and then will have 3-5 weeks of being housebound and recovery before starting any radiation or chemo (which may not be necessary if nothing has spread further than the area being removed).
And all of this sounds horrible, right?
Well when we discussed it, I was anything but down. I found myself joking about how many socks can be knit during 3 weeks of bedrest, and how much chocolate we can bring her to eat if she doesn't return to her mother's in Detroit. I even discussed the fact that she should be...uh...enjoying sexual pleasures of all sorts...as much as possible for the week before surgery. We even joked about how much she wants to keep her ovaries because of how crappy it is to have major body organs removed and how un-fun hormone replacement is and how "yeah, like Oh MY Gawd, after my LAST sex-change operation, the hormone injections were like, THE WORST!"
Which leads me to think one of three things is true:
1. I use some sort of denial as a defense mech (possible, but not likely)
2. My subconscious feels it's most important to keep the person happy and positive
3. I am actually an optimist, and find the glass half full of all her innards instead of her body half empty of them. I mean, birth control and losing 10 lbs at one go? Isn't that a bargain?
posted by Valerie at 8:54 PM
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