Dear Friends,
I am having surgery tomorrow, 9/27/05, as the first step in my battle against pancreatic cancer. I am likely to be tired and weak after the surgery, and then am likely to be tired, weak and nauseous when the post-operative chemo and radiation treatments start. Since I probably won't be very good at communicating then, I'd like to write down my thoughts and feelings ahead of time.
In an ideal world, there would be time to sit and talk with each of you. Time to find out what you are doing; how your life is going; what brings you joy and sadness. I am lying a bit when I say that there isn't much I would change in my life, or much that I regret not having done. My life does feel blessed and complete, but I do wish I had spent more time with you.
I think it is good to have a few regrets, and a few bits of unfinished business to add to the reasons for staying alive. Seriously, and obviously, there are more significant motivations for me to stay alive than sitting on a porch, sharing a beer, or more likely a beer for you and a nutritionally sound, digestively neutral protein beverage for me. However, I am going to stack up all the motivations I can.
Despite the lack of contact in the past years, I know and can feel your care and sympathy. Some of you I've talked to, others have talked to Ruth or Saiya. I am starting a list of the people I need to visit and chat with as I feel better, but I'm afraid it will be incomplete.
Please reach out (yet again in some cases) to me. I am reclusive, but I am going to try even harder to maintain contact. There isn't a rush, even with several negative outcomes, I will be around for a while, and right now expect to be around for a lot longer. Drop me an email, or talk to Ruth or Saiya.
Thank you all for your thoughts and your concern. I am not sure I deserve them, but I do (now) believe and feel them.
How to Talk to a Man with Cancer
Here, I am running the thought experiment of being able to talk to my self of 23 years ago. Then, Van Alen Clark Jr was diagnosed with esophogeal cancer. He had a significant operation to remove the tumor and seemed to be free of cancer. Then, about a year later, it came back and he died.
Neither time did I send him a card, and only in his last days did I visit him. This inaction and silence on my part remains one of the things I most wish I could change in my life.
Another, earlier, embarassing moment that I sometimes wish I could change was writing 'C'est la vie' on a card to my grandmother when she was diagnosed with cancer. At the time, with all the wisdom of a 6th-grader (or so), I knew she was going to die. (I turned out to be right.) With this knowledge, I couldn't find any words of hope. Now, on the other side, it is pretty easy to see what to write: 'I love you Granny. Thank you for giving me Mommy and for teaching me so much. I hope you feel better soon. Love, Andrew.'
For Mr. Clark, the advice is similar, but I'd add the reassurance that there is nothing wrong you can say. In terms of being hurt and scared, nothing will match Dr. Martin saying: 'I don't have the news I was hoping to give you -- there is a mass on your pancreas that is causing your jaundice.'
As an example of how it is okay to say anything, I'm going to tell a story about my dentist. In this story, she sounds unfeeling and perhaps hurtful, but my reaction was sincere laughter and thankfulness.
The day after I learned I had a pancreatic mass, I went to my scheduled dental checkup. There, my dentist observed that I looked different, and I told her that there was a mass on my pancreas blocking my bile duct and that there was a lot of bilirubin in my blood making me jaundiced. She continued on with her train of thought, and asked if I'd been eating too many carrots -- her roommate in college had been eating a lot of carrots and her skin turned yellow/orange from the carotene. Then she observed that no one would notice if she turned yellow (she is Asian).
After that, she did express more appropriate concern and sympathy, but I remember laughing hard and sincerely at her comment about her skin color. It was much, much better for me to hear what she was thinking and get a small insight into her thoughts, than to hear some more appropriate, but drier and emptier palliative comment.
There is nothing wrong you can say to me, so please say something. If it is too hard to talk to me, and I can imagine many ways it would be, talk to Ruth or Saiya or someone else in my family.
Thank you.