Bruce Lee & Other Fighters

My hair is falling out, my left collarbone area is sore from surgery to insert a “medi-port,” and I have months of treatment ahead with a hazy prognosis.

Yet, I feel lucky. 

This path I'm on is well worn from others who have gone down this road. Others who have braved, and are braving, far, far worse.

Like Sam. He’s battling the deadliest skin cancer.  He has had eleven surgeries in the past three years. Half his nose is gone. His right arm has been sliced and carved to a pulp. His right ear had to be cut off. There’s a chunk gone from the top of his scalp.  But he says for all the hell and the dark places he’s been, and all the awful comments and stares he gets when he ventures outside, cancer has made him a better person, a more compassionate person.

This is serious shit, nothing to joke about. But I wish I had a good joke for Sam, something hilarious that will cut the palpable heartache in the room with uncontrollable laughter. Something so funny it will pierce through his horrifying ordeal and make everything okay, if only for a few minutes. Something so magical he will never have dark days again.

 

But I have nothing for Sam. I don’t have a joke, and I can’t stop thinking about what he just said about the cruelty he faces every time he walks outside his front door. Really, people?!  I wish there was a way I could give those people a piece of my mind. I want to block their path, unleash a fury and get all italicized UPPER CASE bold face on them.

I calm my inner Bruce Lee, and return my attention to the others in the support group.  Roger says he’s been battling his cancer for years. He’s been in remission six times. Six times. Sarah’s cancer is not responding to any of the treatments. She’s running out of options, but her smile lights up the room and she praises her oncologist. Brenda’s almost done with treatment and may soon return to her life as a dancer, but is worried sick the cancer will return and her decision not to have the final chemo treatment will come back to haunt her.

Nothing and no one is perfect in this group. Whereas before, in our pre-cancer lives, we could glide along on a cloud of perceived perfection and illusion of immortality, today our lives, our choices, our diseases, our strengths and weaknesses are all on display, some more visible than others.

Like Sam.

He tells us about his next proposed surgery. The panel of doctors he met with say they need to take off half his face, the left side, and it will have to remain an open wound.  It will be the most disfiguring surgery yet. Sam takes off his black panama hat and looks at the group of us. He says he cancelled the surgery at the last moment. The spiritual price tag was simply too much.