"It is in our nature to transcend our limitations, but too often we get distracted by everyday life. If life is always smooth, we're never challenged." "Suffering is probably necessary to make us grow."
William Breitbart, MSK, Chief of Psychiatry
There is a good article in Psychology Today, August 2009, entitled "The New Survivors."
Read it.
3 comments:
Wow, that WAS a good article.
It kind of reminded me of my uncle. I don't know if I've told you, but he has terminal thyroid cancer. Apparently it's very rare, and 97% of the time it's genetic. He fell into the other 3%. There is no cure that they know of, and the mortality rate is 100%. When he first was diagnosed, he was told by multiple doctors that the expected mortality rate was 3 years, and that the longest recorded lifespan with this cancer was 5 years.
That was 7 years ago, and he is still living, still traveling, still fighting. He still has cancer; he's not (and probably never will be) in remission. But reading those stories about people enduring horrific treatments in order to fight back made me think of him. He's been through a million experimental drugs, protocols, radiation regimes. And some of the side effects have been really bad. But still he keeps looking. And even if he died tomorrow, he'd still be a medical miracle, just for surviving as long as he has.
It's amazing what people can accomplish by sheer force of will.
Thanks for that referral to that article. I'm going to read and re-read it for a long time. I'll have to because even moments after reading it, I can hardly remember what it was about but I know it has meaning. Is it just old age (I'm 54)or is my memory extraordinally unretentive? I'll print it and read it on paper, that's usually a good remembering thing for me. Once I've studied it, I'll tell you the parts that resonated with me. Just one thing, I don't think I'm the fighter kind, I'm more sort of how can I weather this shit and read a good book today? But it is also nice to know that more people survive cancer today than ever before and that doctors don't always know best.
I have printed, I have read and I'm a little better for it, I think. An amazing article and what I will remember is the definition of Hope, that it's not blind but in fact very clear-sighted and that hopeful people "Do the best they can." It's almost a relief to accept that whatever way we choose to deal with cancer, if we have hope of some sort, it doesn't matter How we do it.
PS: Where do they find the identifying words!!! At the alphabet lost-and-found?!
Post a Comment