It was pretty mundane actually. It was early spring and the last bite of winter had faded away…there had been a couple of little heat waves where the temperature spiked up to the thirties C. The season of head colds and aches and pains. You want to get outside and see that first pale green of buds on the trees. In the post covid world even if you’ve had every available vaccine, you get nervous if a cough lasts more than a day or two. Both Louise and I had nasty coughs that lasted a while and we checked ourselves out with the Covid test kits…and they were clean. We decided to see our doctor to find out if there was a bronchial virus going around. That led to a chest X-ray for each of us. Both of us had some lung issues , hers led to a bronchial specialist and mine led to a CT scan.
The short part of the story is that one test led to another and a date with a thoracic surgeon. And a diagnosis of lung cancer. More tests and biopsys confirmed it was stage four melanoma and it was also in my prostate. I’d had melanoma as a skin cancer a dozen years ago, had surgery and three years of follow up and got on with my life. I had learned a lot about melanoma and hearing that it was in my lungs was a chilling news. Nothing really prepares you. Louise was with me in the meeting but in the moment there is a feeling of total aloneness. In that moment alone you know that you will die. After a certain age every body “knows” that they’re going to die and for most of us it’s an abstract concept. In that moment alone it’s no longer abstract…it’s concrete. Personal. There may not be a date but it is none the less specific.
At that point you have to , I had to step back from that abyss and say “O.K. what now?” . And “what now?” is to get with the program, meet the oncologists, learn the options and as my niece says you learn how to live with lung cancer rather than surrender to the idea that you will die from it. Yes, of course I will very likely die from it…I’m eighty two years old. I would have died from something pretty soon anyway. Might have fallen off my bike. So the inevitability of it becomes a littler less intense. I’ll live with it until I die from it or from something else.
Are there “life lessons” in all of this? No, I don’t think so. I think life lessons are what our lives bring us every day. If we’re very lucky, there are a wide range of them and each one shapes who we are. So I’ll just keep on keeping on, thank you.
It has however, made me think a lot more about the nature of love. My love for my partner Louise who is living this with me and the constant reminder that I’m not alone. My love for my friends is deep and abiding and they are all supportive and I appreciate it. I don’t think we express it enough, that love. I come from a generation that barely was able to express it at all…inside or outside of a family. Maybe the generation before me lost too much…too many wars, too many disasters, too many loves lost. And they closed those doors. It has taken a long time to open them again, to let love in and out. And yet, looking around, I see and feel the anger and frustration, the conflict and hatred flaring and bursting into flame and I also see people pulling those doors closed again…fearing to love… fearing the loss implied.
Hate does not heal, love does and I think we need to work on that. Share it. Spread it, remind those we love that we do…love them. Like I love you. I do.
When this started I wrote to my friends and told them I wasn’t going to keep or write a cancer journal and this note is not that either. Lung cancer doesn’t define me. It’s not who or what I am. What I choose to write in this blog should be about what is.
Blues: 10 09 24
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