There’s a lot that goes unsaid about cancer. Most people are oblivious to it, or mythologize it based on soap operas and movies that use it as a terrible plot device without delving into the reality of it.
After 16 months of cancer and chemo, I wish that more patients had a voice and were heard in social forums over the din of memes and cat videos. It’s odd that we now feel so open discussing politics, but cancer remains a taboo subject and misunderstood by so many.
Visiting the Ambulatory Surgery Center on the 5th floor and then Oncology on 4th, I had a wonderful conversation with an older gentleman on the elevator. He asked about my mantle cell lymphoma, he told me about his acute myeloid leukemia, and he ended our conversation with “this too shall pass. One way or another, it will pass.”
I doubt our younger cancer combatants would have appreciated our conversation. As his hands jittered and he told me about his advanced neuropathy, we have to wonder if the treatment is sometimes worse than the disease. He could either cry or laugh at the lack of sensation in his hands and lack of motor control in trying to push an elevator button.
So tell me, truthfully. Be honest with that gentleman and with me. There is hope, and then there is truth, sometimes they overlap and sometimes it’s just about survival and persistence. Today, for that gentleman, it’s about persistence.