My dad, characteristically pessimistic, was not overly surprised by the news that my cancer had returned. After all, he was quite used to bad news. It was just one more undeserved bombshell to fall upon our family. One might assume that time and past anguish would have provided a natural immunization to further emotional rending. Still, somehow he felt the pain; I saw it in his eyes. For Mom, the news was emotional heartburn and swept like a roaring fire through her chest. After Dad phoned her she caught her breath, walked to my old bedroom and stood in the doorway for a long while. Then a feeling of anger added fuel to the fire; she had remained at home for conferences, giving her time and effort for the children of other parents, yet some never bothered to attend their scheduled conferences. It had been a slap in the face; coupled with my poor health report, however, Mom felt victimized, as if by traitors. She stayed home. . . she "should" have been there.
Mom stared at the lime green walls through a transparent screen of tears and remembered me as a little girl, long-limbed and skinny. It was happening again; the impossible had returned to deal its final blow.
The pain of reality is not solely one's own. If an individual's relationships with family members and friends are of foremost importance in his life, the news of his illness will have a profound effect on everyone. Their reactions play a significant role in determining the patient's sense of emotional stability and well-being; he must witness the emotional pain felt by his loved ones, evident through tearful outbursts, inappropriate anger, or pervasive gloom, as each person thinks of the future and the way in which the loss will affect his own happiness. I feel it is crucial to share the internal suffering openly and honestly between family and friends, for a health difficulty, although borne by one, is a burden felt by everyone personally involved.
Though I had prepared myself for whatever the outcome might have been, I had not been certain that the enlargement necessarily predicted the presence of cancer. There were, after all, many other disorders that could cause the liver to enlarge. My haunting emotion that I had not overcome cancer was now parallel with reality; my "balloon of health" was beginning its descent. I focused my eyes on three flower arrangements which were blooming profusely on my nightstand appearing, it seemed, out of nowhere. They formed an odd contrast to the bleak and antiseptic atmosphere, as if to say that life can continue even in such places as hospitals where dim hopes and faltering heartbeats evoke a sense of gloom which permeates entire corridors.
I began to barrage my father with questions, many of which he was unable to answer since he had not yet conversed with the doctors to any great degree. He could only tell me that the surgeon opened my mid-section and took a biopsy. Seeing that the cancer was widely distributed throughout my liver, he was not able to operate and therefore sewed up the incision with best wishes.
Because the cancer was the same type as I'd previously contracted, the doctors believed that it had never actually disappeared in the first place, and spread without their knowledge to the liver. This might have occurred at an early age, lying dormant, or more probably, spreading slowly until it had touched numerous sites. Leiomyosarcomas, presumably, are considered primarily "older women's cancers" which may spread to the lung; this baffled the doctors to such a degree that they placed me on research after the initial bout, at age thirteen. To find that it had again defied their previous knowledge as to the behavior of the average leiomyosarcoma, recurring in the liver without so much as a trace in the lungs, was considered absolutely mystifying and unique.
Despite the uniqueness of the cancer, the fact remained that I was a young woman with a dreaded disease. . . one that had supposedly been "cured" by the lengthy operation and chemotherapy treatment. I reflected how my oncologist (cancer specialist) had reassured the permanence of my cure by saying, "There is more of a chance of your being killed on your drive to the clinic than of having a recurrence of cancer." He was that sure.
I do not envy the doctors. Daily they encounter sickness and health, yet are limited in their ability to heal and assure their patients of continual well-being. They are accused of being incompetent when they cannot act as God. They are assumed to be uncaring and detached, when in all actuality they would lose their sanity if they were subject to emotionally react to each individual sadness. When they deliver the truth to a waiting patient, they are often called tactless. They are blamed for finding a health problem and thus disrupting their patient's happy-go-lucky lifestyle. Personally, I'm content with doctors and feel a need to demonstrate that gratefulness. When the surgeon visited my room after the operation, I greeted him with a smile and attempted to make him comfortable. I knew it wasn't easy to face me; we looked at each other like old friends and he took my hand in his own. What could have been said that had not already expressed itself in his eyes?
I questioned Dr. Telander about the various specifics of the operation, and casually inquired as to the reason they did not "simply rip the sucker (my liver) out?" He then informed me that one cannot live without the organ. Slightly embarrassed, I said that I had never been much of a biology student and continued with other questions. I truly was not aware that the liver was an organ of such consequence.
Although I never encountered Telander again, I was assigned to a doctor who made one or two rounds daily to note my progress. I bombarded him with any questions which happened to cross my mind, no matter how stupid they seemed.