Coping

Without going through it ourselves, it is difficult to fully comprehend the horror of a cancer diagnosis. While many of us never have to face it personally, it would be unusual to find someone who didn’t have a friend or relative who did. I remember going to visit a friend who was in hospice after cancer treatment and as I drove there wondering what I would say, I figured he had suffered enough sad faces and condolences meant more for the dead than the living. Still I did not know what to expect when I saw him, was he going to look frail and deathly or be his normal, robust self? At the door I knocked and when he opened it, I blurted out: “Man you look terrible.”

“I do not,” he blurted back. And, he didn’t. He looked the way I had always known him and I was so relieved that he was or at least looked healthy, and that the ice was broken.

Now a second friend is facing the same demon. There has been one operation and since summer she has lived with the uncertainty of how effective that operation was. Recently there were some complications of mind with subsequent testing and it all leaves her with no solid answer as she faces the holidays. Through her I am seeing one of worst aspects is the waiting and the uncertainty, partly due to the fact that the outcome is in part controlled by others who are slow in communicating from their clinical distance.

Again as a friend I am faced with the quandary of what to say that is reassuring and expresses genuine concern without being overly condescending. As an aside, in editing events calendars I have noticed there are now classes for friends and relatives of people suffering cancer that probably offer answers to at least some of these questions. As I was thinking through what to say, I came up with a sort of parable I think might be an empathetic situation from my own adventures. The hope here is that this doesn't trivialize what my friends are experiencing,

It took some time thinking through this situation and reading her note a couple of times and it seems there are so many possible answers, it is overwhelming and like she said maybe it is best go to bed with a book....

Early on I was afraid of flying. The slightest bump and I was grabbing something. That changed when I went along the Iditarod trail in a small airplane. We were flying over a musher in a little Cessna 172 and the pilot who I am sure was testing me, asked if I would like a picture. When I nodded yes, he turned the airplane into a screaming dive toward earth to get the closest picture possible. I immediately dropped the camera and grabbed this little bar welded to the overhead. It was at that point I realized I was grabbing onto the very thing that was going to kill me and that I had absolutely no control over what was going to happen. Rather than scare me further, that thought relaxed me and I have been fine flying ever since. I let go of that false security and faced the unknown and took the picture. Perhaps it is fatalistic resignation and perhaps it is recognizing at times we have no control over our circumstance and there is no advantage to worrying excessively about something we cannot change.

And by the way, this post is proof I have survived every airplane flight I have ever taken.