Are You Over the Slap in the Face?

Maybe this should have been the first entry in the blog because it’s the beginning point.  But I think that I had forgotten this event, but it needs to be covered.  At the point that I received the news that I had cancer, I was just stunned and it put me in a place of disbelief and I felt some things that I cannot describe.  It was just not real.

Cancer was a death sentence as far as I knew.  Nobody survived that killer.  The fears started to creep along with the whys and the why me.  The slap hurts and blows us back from our little world of routines.  As we gradually absorb the thought we see that our world will never be the same.

My doctor confirmed that I had multiple myeloma over the phone while I was on a business trip.  All of the tests came back finding that “bone eating lesion” on my sixth rib was indeed cancer.  I probably should have been a little more alarmed at the term “bone eating lesion”, but it all seemed so surreal.

I started looking up the cancer on the Internet.  First I confused the name with melanoma which is a completely different kind of cancer.  Finally, in talking with my wife, I researched one and found out that what I had what used to be called bone cancer.  My grandmother had died from it when I was twelve.

Multiple myeloma was a death sentence until the mid-1980’s.  Now, the survival rate is about 50%.  I didn’t know any of that at the time; I just knew that I had cancer.  I didn’t know how much it would transform my life and how much I would change.  The slap just stunned me.  I’m pretty thick headed and it takes me a while to catch on to a new reality that I have to face.

Probably the hardest part to deal with was the uncertainty.  There are not answers to questions like, “Am I going to die?”  “What is going to happen to me?”  “What will happen to my family?”  “Where is God in all of this?”  “Have I been abandoned?”  I felt alone, not knowing really what to do or where to go.

Fortunately the medical community kicks in.  They guide you through all of the things that need to be done.  They schedule the surgeries, the chemotherapy, and the radiation as needed and you just follow along.  Gradually your mind clears and you begin to figure it out and come out of the process with some hope.  But expect an adjustment period as you get use to what you are going through.

Gradually, the routines begin to be manageable.  You find help from friends and loved ones that you never dreamed would be involved.  The community around you responds to your needs and as the stun subsides, you begin to feel the love.  Life is not necessarily good at this point depending on what you are going through, but you find it to be a time to begin healing.