Pacing in Front of the Microwave

Over the years I have often quipped that as Americans we pace in front of the microwave.  Anything worth doing is worth doing quickly.  Technology is outdated six months after its release. (The by-now-very-old May 2011 commercial by Best Buy is a classic statement of this phenomenon.)

Why do I bring this up?  Sharon and I have had enough of this season.  We want off the roller coaster.  We’ve been at this since April, after all, and are ready to move on.  Especially during the days following each infusion.  Life slows and our circle becomes very small.  And it’s not like when you go on vacation to some remote mountain cabin of your choosing, taking with you a few good books to read between hikes among the flora and fauna.  No, it’s like living with the flu every three weeks, only this flu also takes your hair along with your energy and gives you bone pain to boot.  And like the healthy person in the couple where one has the flu, I get the job of making the lite dinners and snacks, keeping the water glasses filled (Sharon mentioned last night that she’s sick of water.  That tells you something about her beverage options.), patting her hand, kissing her forehead and staying close by.  It’s a role I take seriously and wouldn’t trade with anyone, but if Sharon were feeling better there are certainly things we’d rather be doing.

With the upcoming round of Taxel followed by Herceptin and radiation we’re looking at about a year’s worth of treatment.  For 21^st century North Americans, that’s a long time.  Where’s the magic bullet?  Isn’t there something we can take that won’t have side effects?  Why does it have to take so long, cost so much (this is where a good credit history helps) and have so many implications for Sharon?  We’ve been at this 4 months already.  Isn’t that long enough?

When we get to this place in our heads, we have to take a deep breath and consider the alternatives.  There are people throughout the world who would be more than willing to commit a year to becoming cancer-free. There are people throughout the world with other diseases and syndromes who will have a lifetime of treatment (or not).  Knowing this does not take away our sense of frustration or make those recovery days easier.  But it does help bring us more quickly back to our gratitude that there is something that can be done that will keep Sharon here and, Lord willing, will restore her to health.  It reminds us that we are blessed, not because we deserve it but because we live in an age where there are those who have used their God-given (whether they acknowledge it or not) curiosity about the complexities of the human body to discover ways to combat cancer.  And it reminds us that God is with us each step of the way.  As Eugene Peterson translates Hebrews 13:5, “God assured us, ‘I’ll never let you down, never walk off and leave you.’”  Or as Paul reminds us in his letter to the church at Rome, “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (Romans 8:35-NLT)  Paul’s answer to this rhetorical question, by the way, is “No.”

So when you pray for us in this season, remember to pray for healing, but also for continued glimpses of the bigger picture.  We are “all human all the time” and therefore subject to discouragement, sadness, depression and impatience.  Remember to pray about those side effects, too.

Well, I have to run.  I have something in the microwave. 

Precisely

Sharon and I were talking the other day about how to describe this season precisely.  For those of you who know us, we both work at communicating precisely.  We cringe when someone refers to a “mute” point rather than a “moot” point.  Chester Drawers was an omelet parlor in Costa Mesa; a chest of drawers is an item of furniture for storing your clothes. A person who “could care less” still has a ways to go before total apathy sets in while a person who “couldn’t care less” is at the lowest point on the care-o-meter.  But I digress.

Before her surgery, I would tell people my wife has cancer.  Has. Present tense.  The surgeon is confident he removed all of the cancer including the two affected (not effected) lymph nodes.  So do we now need to say Sharon had cancer?  Had.  Past tense.  If so, why is she going through chemotherapy?  You can’t kill off cancer cells that don’t exist, can you?  Can we say Sharon is battling cancer?  But if the cancer is gone, why are we still fighting?

What this quandary reminds us is that for all its (not it’s) advances, medicine is still not an exact science.  There are no guaranteed cures.  There are many unanswered questions. We recently watched all four seasons of the BBC series, Bramwell. (If you decide to watch it, stop at the end of Season 3.  Under no circumstances should you go on to Season 4.) Eleanor Bramwell is one of the very few female doctors at the end of the 19^th century (that’s the 1800’s not the 1900’s.).  The first 3 seasons are vivid, graphic reminders of how far medicine has come in the last 100 years.  I would not want Sharon to have breast cancer in 1898.  I would not want to get a simple infection in 1898.  But for all the advances since then, doctors are still making educated guesses today because, as David points out in Psalm 139, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Our bodies are vastly complex and the variables are beyond calculation.

So I return to my question.  How should we refer to Sharon’s current status?  Maybe something along the lines of “Sharon had cancer and we hope that it has been totally removed by surgery but just in case it hasn’t we are currently taking steps that we hope will make its return less likely.”  The sentence itself shows how complex this season is.  Precisely.