Beating Cancer- Episode 2

Beating Cancer - Episode 2

It's interesting how different the responses are from different people when you 'go down with' cancer.

My dear daughter, Cath, came down from Canberra 600 kilometres away, when she knew I was in hospital for the surgery. Arriving while I was still flat on my back, not allowed to sit up for at least a week because I'd been opened up from sternum to pelvic bone.

As I said in my last post, my children have seen me endure a number of different illnesses. So Cath greeted me with 'Mum, I've worked it out'.

'What have you worked out Cath.'

'Well - when you were due to be born the angels went to God and said "We have a soul ready to be sent to earth, but there's no body to go with it". Suddenly a little angel at the back of the crowd jumped up excitedly and called out "There is one over there in the corner. It's a bit faulty ----" and before he could say another word God said 'It'll have to do!"

And then I had to try not to laugh! It was such a fantastic visual metaphor for my physical life up to that point.

On the other hand, my son Steve couldn’t get himself to say ‘the word’. He referred to it as ‘this thing’. ‘Now you’ve got this thing Mum, are you sorry you left Cockatoo?’ he asked. I’d lived in Cockatoo, up in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges, for eleven years, only moving really close to Melbourn's CBD a couple of years before the cancer struck.

That was a journey I’d consciously chosen, because I needed to be nearer to the City, for business reasons. As soon as Steve asked that question I realised what had happened. My daughter in law is a very experienced nurse educator and I know she’d told him I was going to die. And of course that was on the cards.

So I thought ‘Heavens, Steve is picturing me lying on my four seater lounge, looking out the huge glass windows at the lovely mountain ash trees, slowly dying, like someone in a tragic opera. But I responded ‘Steve, I’ve never been so glad to be close to the City. It’s enabled me to be treated at the very best hospital, close to home, no worries about travel’ – and closer to the friends who would help me.

Each of my sons and daughters have told me at different times over many years that they’ve used me as a role model, because regardless of all the problems I’ve had, they see I’ve stayed busy and involved with all sorts of causes and achieved more than anyone else they know – so they tell me. You can’t imagine how thrilled they were when my first book was published when I was 50.

One of the things that we come up against with a diagnosis of cancer, is of course the question of whether you may have to leave this world. And if you do, has the cancer won?

Can you beat cancer? Or can you find a way to beat it, whether you live or die, by finding a way to live each minute of each hour of each day so fully, that you’ve lived a lifetime of experience and growth anyway?

I’m so happy for readers such as yourselves who are prepared to explore these issues.

When you’re told you have cancer your world stops in its tracks. At least momentarily.

Here comes your big learning curve.

First you learn that Cancer is not just one illness. It’s different depending on where it is in your body, what stage it’s at, how long it’s been there, whether it’s spread to other organs. They’re all called cancer, simply because the cells are not dying off as they should.

You’ll hear Doctors and Nurses talking about ‘staging’ cancer. They’re referring to the four stages. It begins from one cell which then proliferates into a larger lump, but first of all contained in one solid mass; then it moves outside that mass and begins to create its own blood vessels – that’s really nasty of it, isn’t it? It makes sure that no matter what happens to you, it has it’s own blood supply, so it can grow as quickly as it likes – that’s stage 2; Next – stage 3, it’s moved to the lymph nodes; before stage 4, where it’s settled in some other organ and is growing there.

My surgeon thought at first that he’d got all there was – then six days later came the news ‘It’s into the lymph nodes’. So it had gone from stage 1 to stage 3 of only 4 stages. Not good news. But I'm stilll here.

And many people today are fortunate enough to receive a diagnosis at the very earliest stage. Often breast cancer is found at that point due to the routine screening we've all been encouraged to have. And that's great news.

But even then there’s the myth of unendurable pain that’s grown up around the very word – cancer. And the possibility of death somewhere down the track.

I had of course been faced with the possibility of my death coming very swiftly - and by that time I didn't care.

Yet this all points out how each person's journey through cancer is different. And very different are the ways each of us cope with it.
The day after I'd written the first poem 'Cancer - Ho Hum' that I posted last time, I heard of a friend who lives in another Australian State - some thousand or more kilometres away, who had just been diagnosed with myelosis. We shared the experience of being solo parents after a divorce and now living alone. So I knew that she would be feeling stranded, because of that situation plus the loneliness of being the person with cancer. So I sat down and wrote :

COMMUNITY OF SURVIVORS

You are not alone
The poverty of illness
the aloneness
You share with others
alone with pain

The night flows through
Happy people smiling
You are not alone Beryl
You are not alone

All about you
are others
Who are like you
alone
But not alone
with this shared experience

I am with you all
when I hear of
your pain
your long day
Like my pain
like my long day
alone

Not alone

               10th September – late night

I've always been hesitant about offering my work to others who haven't asked for it, or bought one of my books. Never the less I knew of her need, so bit the bullet and sent a copy to her.

Glory of glories, a few days later I received her letter "Beryl thank you so much. Your poem was exactly what I needed right at that time"

This joyful response has now happened to me so many times when I've gathered up my courage and risked being wrong, but finding I was right to make the offering, that I've become quite brave about doing that.

I hope someone reading this today will find it's 'just the right thing, at the right time'.

See you same time, same place, next week.

Many blessings to all

Beryl