21 November 2013

Is It Cancerous In Here, Or Is It Just Me?

I'm not sure if it is because of the stupid pink October, or the even stupider 'Movember'** but lately I've been seeing a lot of cancer.  I feel surrounded by it.  Friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances have all had bad news diagnoses rendered in the past little while.  People who I have been following by blog have succumbed, new blogs are constantly popping up as recommended reading for me and a good many of them are Stage 4 folks.

** As an aside, my beef with Movember is: Why make your face look like a vagina in order to bring awareness to men's health????  Well, and I hate mustaches/beards.  But I digress....

I'm trying to figure out how I feel about this because I don't feel right.  I'm quite disturbed by it and I'm not sure if what I'm feeling is part of my new normal (being hypersensitive to cancer?) or just a result of the amount of bad news I've heard.  We all feel that twinge of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God when we hear of someone else's misfortunes, but having been struck once really brings it home.  And having had it doesn't protect me from having it again... like chicken pox would.  So when I hear that someone else has cancer, it disturbs me in a hey-it-could-be-me-again way, as well as an another-one-bites-the-dust kind of way.  I know what surgery and chemo is like.  Thinking about others going through it is saddening.  Sure, it's doable, but it sucks.

The thing about cancer is that it is really so very random.  Sure there are risk factors, but how many times have you heard someone say something to the effect of "I can't believe Jane Doe got cancer!  She exercised, and didn't smoke and was really healthy!  Who would have though she'd get it?"  Which is kind of like saying you can't believe John Doe got hit by a bus, because he always crossed at the corner.  In fact, I'd hazard to say that UN-healthy people have a better chance of early diagnosis simply because they are more closely monitored.  We ALL carry cancer in our bodies, it's just that most of the time our cells recognize it and kill it before it gets established.  But sometimes, they don't.

I'm quite unsettled these days, also I'm feeling a teensy bit morbid in that I'm keeping a close eye on the folks I know who are terminal. And feeling guilty for it, because I'm finding the process fascinating.  Our culture so poorly prepares us for death - from our own perspective or for the deaths of our loved ones.  It is the elephant in the room.  No matter what you believe, death is treated with an aura of finality that is almost dismissive.  We talk of carrying on, healing, and moving past the grief, sometimes even before the loved one has passed.  And we discuss settling accounts, making peace, and burying the hatchet if we are the one dying.  And what about the age old question, is it better to know when you are going to die or have it come out of the blue with no warning?

And as humans are a curious lot, I ask, as most people do, "Why?" and I search for meaning in what I've already identified as a totally random event.  I feel an obligation to glean some lesson from those who are facing a terminal diagnosis, as if doing so would give their passing some meaning.  Will John Doe be gratified to know that having read his blog, I hugged my kids today?  Does that make a dying person 'feel better?'  Is this just a manifestation of 'survivors guilt?'  You know, my 'new normal.'