There's something about cancer that can shake you to the bone. It keeps coming up like a bad ugly penny... Dad suffered through several bad months with lung cancer, that kind they show on the TV commercials, asking people to call if they have it. Well, it ain't no lottery you'll be winning, if you do. As my mom will tell you, whatever the class and the action, it's never enough payment for a loved one's life.
Then just before Christmas, Mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. Well, I thought quite deniably, they'll simply cut out the tumor, sew her back up and she'll be good as new.
If only it were that simple. Typically I'm a Homework Hannah, surfing the ends of the Net to find out everything I can about anything conceivably possible. But just entering this new job, my career, for heaven's sake, I did not take the time. I couldn't afford the distraction. Plus, I was trusting all would be okay.
Well, 'tweren't okay. Weeks later, she was still in hospital, as the Brits quaintly say...fighting for her life. No, I take that back, she wasn't fighting. That was the problem. So I whisked in my boys to her bedside, first in photos, then in real life. Boy, were they scared out of their Nintendo-playing trances. She did finally recover...is at home, and yes, she's living on her own still. But fragility reminds me of how close we came to losing her, and how thin the threads are, on the end of her life.
So last night, as I knelt before my closed-lid toilet, praying not to the porcelain god but to my heavenly father, cancer was once again on my mind... for three different reasons. (Why was I in the humid prayer closet? My 16-year-old had already barged into my bedroom unnannounced as I was trying to go deep inside and reach out and up to the heavens.)
Two Marthas, and a very special friend (no, her name isn't Mary) are wrestling with cancer and scary health issues right now. One just received news she's to have a double masectomy, not sure what else afterward; the second is in for one to three days of iodine treatment, in isolation, for a, get this, MICRO cancer cell. One teeny tiny speck of dust... but of course that could grow into a larger problem. The third is just beginning chemo, headed for radiation later.
You can bet I am learning all about breast cancer this time, and there are still so many unknowns that I'm not relying on much that has to do with mankind this time. Doctors are well-schooled and experienced; machines are remarkable, but some things are best left to prayer. Like a person's sense of well-being...
I don't know what to pray for them, I say, I cry as I kneel there. I plead for help. For mercy. And somehow, the words come... and stumble out of my mouth. More mercy. And tremendous blessings. Asking in Jesus' name.
I get up from the floor. Every joint in my body aches. But at least I am cancer-free. What have I to complain about? And I wonder: is this what God means about bearing one another's burdens? feeling the pain as if it were your own? tormented grief and unending questions and worry? long walks at twilight so no one will see the tears spill from your eyes and wonder what is wrong?
Last year, as I turned 40, I begged off my first mammogram. Not this time. Not this year....
God be with you, my three wonderful friends, whom I treasure very much. May you feel Him touching you in places you never knew existed.
