However, sleep at night still doesn’t come so easily. I had hoped that maybe the intense chemo I’m doing could obliterate this one tumor, but my oncologist explained that although chemotherapy can shrink the tumor, it will never get rid of it. The cell still has the potential to multiply and spread, but if the chemo can control it, both another surgery and or radiation may become options.
When I asked my oncologist what my surgical options might be, he responded with a question:
“Do you remember what I said before you proceeded with your first surgery?”
“Yes,” I replied. “You said that you were indifferent as to whether or not I did the surgery because the risk of the cancer returning was so high.”
He affirmed that my memory was correct, and then explained that the situation would be the same for any surgery I might choose to do in the future.
“You explained that the surgery was a slim chance for a cure, so I jumped at it because it was my only chance,” I recalled.
He then said that if he were in my shoes, he would have done the same thing. Hmmm, so does this mean that as my oncologist, he would protect me from the risks of surgery and as a human being, he would advise me to do it to fight for my life? I don’t know, but in this battle I find myself continually in the wake of feeling damned if I do or damned if I don’t when it comes to my fighting options. In this context, damned doesn't necessarily mean hell-bound, but trapped, or surrounded on all sides.
Radiation may also be a possibility. My oncologist did not want to discuss too much before we know what the next scan in October will bring. He explained that I am on a bridge that is still being built, as my case is rare and there is not current data to support the possible success of treatments. I am currently doing a gold standard of treatment, but the future will likely put me in the experimental realm.
Lately, I wonder how long I will have to fight this battle. As I approach my year mark this week knowing there is no resolution, the unrelenting intensity at times feels overwhelming. Although I can’t say I will ever get used to chemo, it has become routine, and I feel like pain in my middle name. It actually literally is. Dolores, after my grandmother means pain in Spanish! The Police’s “King of Pain” has been “running through my brain” lately.
I was about 7 years old when this song came out:
This week was our first week of school. Here is picture of me, sister, Natalie, and uncle Joe on our first day of school in 1984. Below is my kiddos on their first day of school in 2016!
I listened to the song, and then read the lyrics, and felt they are so relate-able to my current situation:
There's a little black spot on the sun today
It's the same old thing as yesterday
There's a black hat caught in a high tree top
There's a flag pole rag and the wind won't stop
There's a fossil that's trapped in a high cliff wall
There's a dead salmon frozen in a waterfall
There's a blue whale beached by a springtime's ebb.
With the world turning circles running 'round my brain.
I guess I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign,
But it's my destiny to be the king of pain.
Sting discusses various scenarios in which living creatures or elements of nature are trapped between a rock and a hard place. I pray that this reign as “the queen of pain” will end soon, but at present, due to the hard facts of Stage Iv cancer, I am feeling stuck.
Then I am also reminded that no matter how bleak things may appear at the moment, I will never be permanently stuck. Although I have been on an emotional roller coaster for the past year, I find that I do have quiet moments which remind me that in one way or another, everything will be alright.
One of these moments came when a sweet couple in our church congregation, who had been through a cancer struggle 35 years ago took the time during Sunday school to share with us how she was healed after a brutal fight, and that they were confident that I would heal too.
Another of these moments came at Church when my friend's sweet little girl sang "Gethsemane" which teaches that because Christ overcame sickness, sin, and death through His infinite and eternal atonement, so that none of us are every permanently stuck.
Lately, I have been discouraged because I feel that there is no end in sight to suffering through cancer. I have recently had the impression that even though Christ's suffering in Gethsemane is recorded as a finite event, that the sacrifice is also "infinite and eternal," meaning that its likely that time stood still, and that suffering seemed to have no end, even for Jesus Christ, who was divine.
In the book of Luke in the New Testament, we get just a glimpse of how much Christ suffered. He bled from every pore, and in agony cried out, "If thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 22:42).
But the bitter cup could not be removed at that moment so that He could "loose the bands of death which bind his people; and ,,,,take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities" (Alma 7:12).
As this sweet song teaches, "The fight was won by Jesus."
With the fight already won, this means that I too will win my fight in due time.
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