Guilt

GUILT.  How does that word make you feel?  Erma Bombeck said, “Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.”    John D. MacDonald wrote, “Guilt is the most merciless disease of man.”  Arthur Buchwald penned, “When we grieve, tears and guilt get mixed together.”

I think Arthur Buchwald’s quote resonates the most with me.  When we are grieving, we feel guilty about feeling any joy.  When we know someone else who is grieving, we feel even more guilty about feeling joy.  How can we possibly be happy when someone we love is hurting or grieving?

My latest scans in June showed that I continue to remain medically stable.  I’m a little over two years and three months into this MBC journey and the treatment is doing what it is supposed to do.  26 cycles of the oral chemo drug appear to be working.  Yay for stable.  Let’s celebrate!

But here’s the kicker:  A woman I know from the Breast Cancer Organization forum is NOT stable.  Her Stage IV triple negative breast cancer is advancing, and she has had significant progression in her liver.  She is jaundiced, sick, tired, and is going through yet another treatment which is harder on her body than the previous one.  She recently shared that she is starting to feel better, but now needs transfusions to counteract the effect of the chemo drug she is receiving.  She’s getting close to running out of treatment options.

I’ve followed this woman on the BCO forum, on Instagram, and on her blog.  Her blog is called “Never Tell Me the Odds.”  Never Tell Me the Odds (tumblr.com)   Good title, right?  We DO NOT want to be told our odds.  I feel like she’s a friend, even if we’ve never met.  She’s funny, gritty, and realistic.    And even though IT’S NOT MY FAULT this woman’s cancer has progressed, I still feel guilty.  I feel guilty she is suffering, and I’m not.  I feel guilty I’m still on my first line of treatment, and she’s nearly out of options.

I feel guilty when I see the fear on the face of a friend who has been diagnosed with an earlier stage cancer.  She looks at me and wonders if my fate will become hers.  “Hey, Carol was cancer-free for 12 years and look what happened to her!”  This friend is a mom as well as a wife.  I can’t imagine the fear of leaving your children motherless.  It’s just not fair, but who ever said cancer was fair?

There are plenty of things I can feel guilty about, but I think guilt is misplaced when I allow it to weigh on me for something that is absolutely out of my control.  I don’t have a magic wand to make everyone’s illnesses and fears disappear.  So, I’m left with the question of, “What can I do?”  I’ve decided I can care for someone without thinking it’s my place to try to fix their situation.  Sometimes, life is scary and it just plain hurts.  We cope the best way we know how.  We look for hope, joy, and even humor.

There are days when I just don’t see the humor in life, and I don’t feel like laughing.  That’s OK.  It’s to be expected.  Laughter and joy, however, cannot be forever put on hold.  Someone is going to tell a joke and even if we’re hurting, we’re going to laugh.  Or chortle. 

And in case you were waiting for the humor in this post, here it is:  There’s an old joke with many iterations about someone who is badly injured and is asked, “Does it hurt?”  The response is, “I’m fine.  It only hurts when I laugh.”  So today, I will laugh – even if it hurts.  Tomorrow will be better.  And even if it’s not, I’ll still laugh.

Carol

Cancer has progressed to my bones.  I pray that it never enters my soul.

The link to the Never Tell Me the Odds blog may be missing in the above post. Here is the link:
https://nevertellmetheodds2017.tumblr.com