Cancerpeople

What an event when cancer entered our lives a few months ago.

And it has been mostly bad, with some parts even worse, and a couple of parts quite fine.

I thought of blogging some of the ideas and events that occurred to us, in the hope that sharing them would contribute to your life - your understandings, perhaps your concerns. And perhaps I would find some release as well.

Shakespeare's comment: "Sweet are the uses of adversity," covers a bit of the ground. A few other things I have learned - the sweetness is momentary or periodic, the adversity is almost constant. (Story here.)

Doctors are only people. They are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, sometimes compassionate, sometimes expert, sometimes inflexible, and sometimes vain. (Story here.)

Have they any right to be all these things, when we so desperately need straight talk and positivity?

And cancer patients, like my wife, should have no right to make bad decisions! Except that I have no right to make them for her. (Story here.)

This blog is created around Annie's breast cancer - she's stage IIb (looking suspiciously like stage III.) She had her mastectomy (single) a few months back, it has mestastasized, (story here) and after chemo and radiation, we will have to see whether any wandering cancer mites have settled anywhere in her body. Annie is now on her 3rd chemo dose - a total of 5 planned. There's a story within the chemo (she came very close to dying) that I'll recount in a little while. Suffice it to say that, at the beginning of the process, Annie was angry and alone. Now she's occasionally angry, but she's not alone - she and I have suddenly discovered that we have a much deeper love affair in progress than we have been able to generate in the prior 20 years of marriage. And some 60 people wrote get-well cards. And I discovered that there are two critical issues in cancer - medicine and community. (Story here.)

I, Craig, go to a caregivers' seminar run by a spectacular facilitator called Sandra Whiteley for Cancer Care, in Syosset, NY. Most of the members are "more advanced" than either Annie or I, and one, Sue, just died yesterday, which means that Bob, her caregiver husband, will be back to say goodbye in a week or two. I will miss him. I keep learning about life with cancer- about the despair, the desperation, the black humor, the anger and rage, and sometimes the ridiculous - it all seems to come on the dinner. And I marvel at the courage of these caregiver women who put up with occasional, or regular, bad humor, try to live their own lives and who wait for their men to die. (multiple stories!)

Thursday afternoon, Annie and I go back to the oncologist for another chemo cocktail, the third of five. Taxotere is our poison of choice - it make her ill - it's intention is that she survive, the cancer not. Then, the day following, we get Neulasta - a drug which mitigages the side effects of Taxotere - and, by itself, causes extraordinary bone pain - the side effect of a side-effect drug. (Story here, too.)

At any rate, this Thursday evening, before the drug gets really dug in, Annie and I will go out to a snazzy ritual dinner in a local French restaurant, and then we're home to await the outcome.

As I write this, I see other things I'd like to tell you about. This is by way of introduction. Nice to meet you. I hope your relationship with cancer is affected in some positive way. What is totally clear for me is that insightfully and carefully implemented medicine, mixed with a world of good wishes are critical. For survival? Perhaps - we don't know. Perhaps, just to keep on keeping on, you really need your friends, your family, a nurse, a handshake, a hug.

More later.
Craig Jennings