In the shadow of cancer

Barbara Walters recently interviewed actor Patrick Swayze who is surviving pancreatic cancer. He told her, "I keep dreaming of a future, a future with a long and healthy life, not lived in the shadow of cancer but in the light." I thought to myself... yes, that is it. We (patients and caregivers) are always in the shadow of cancer. No matter how much we try to normalize our life, we can’t get away from the elephant in the living room. It’s always there. Bob too lives with the shadow. Everything we do is arranged around, or dictated by the constraints of my cancer.

I’ve been seriously ill before, hospitalized with an unknown ailment that I picked up while traveling in Peru (later diagnosed as paratyphus salmonella and possibly malaria). For days I laid behind doors marked “Isolation,” while blood samples were being sent to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. I remember saying to my doctor, “But I’ve always been such a healthy person.” “You still are,” he said, “you’ve just picked up a bug.” Once the diagnosis was made and appropriate medications given, I was well again and returned to my normal healthy life. When I had my back surgery a few years ago, I was pretty confident that when it was all over I would return to a pain-free active lifestyle, and I did. And that is the part that I find most difficult to deal with. A diagnosis of advanced lung cancer means that I will never be “well” again. Winning the fight in my case won’t be getting cured or returning to the kind of life I am used to living. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, no end to the cancer treatments and its toll on my body. I can do everything possible to keep my body healthy. I can take all the newest cancer drugs, but the best they can do is hold off the cancer, extending my life by months or at most, a few more years.

Does that make me angry? No. I am hardly alone in this. But it does make me look at what I have left of life in a new light. It isn’t enough to exist from day to day. I have been given a little lagniappe (pronounced lan-yap), a word I learned when I lived in Louisiana that means “a little extra or a bonus.” What do I do with this bonus; a bonus that comes with such a high price tag emotionally, physically, and monetarily? How best can I use this time? Despite the shadow, my “little extra” is not something that I want to waste.

... P. L. Morningstar