I wrote recently about my distaste for the word “battle” as
used to describe a person’s life with cancer. There are obvious similarities:
yes, I suppose you could say we’re fighting for our lives. But – um – does that
mean that dying is the same as losing the battle? I’d rather think not.
I’ve decided that it’s more like a journey. You’ve left your
humdrum normal life, and you’ve set sail on unknown dangerous seas. Nothing is
familiar anymore. It’s scary, kids.
You have a goal: getting rid of the cancer. It’s possible.
Other people have done it. You’re not completely alone: you have friends and
supporters, and if you’re lucky (as I am), you also have a partner who loves
you. You have doctors who help you chart your course. (My hematologist even has
someone in her office who’s the “navigator” – planning treatment schedules,
coordinating with other doctors’ offices, etc.)
Journeys have all kinds of endings, don’t they?
-
You make it to the end of the journey, but it’s
not quite what you thought it would be. You don’t suddenly win the game. You
realize, after what you’ve gone through, that you can never be sure of
“tomorrow” again. You completed one journey, but now it turns out (in case you
didn’t know) that life is just one damned journey after another.
-
You run into unexpected complications. You get
nasty side effects. You catch a random virus from a stranger who sneezes on the
back of your neck while you’re on the bus. Suddenly your seven-week journey is
a ten-week journey, or a three-month journey.
-
You decide not to take the journey after all, or
you begin and decide to turn back. What happens then? I suppose you hope for a
miracle to pick you up and drop you at the finish line: you pray, or just
dumbly hope, for an Act of God. (For me, this is a non-starter. God is not going
to cook up any Acts of God for me, especially after the way I’ve talked about
him.)
Journeys are strange and unpredictable. You do your very best,
with the help you’re given, to make your way through unfamiliar and changing terrain.
And you realize that you’re not really in control much of the time; it’s just
out of your hands. Sometimes the end of the journey is way beyond any horizon
you can imagine.
So get off your ass and pick up that One Ring and take it to
Mount Doom.
Even if you don’t know the way.
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