Hope is alluring. Tumors shrink; pain and discomfort recede. These results offer a glimpse at a longed-for possibility. Cancer patients are told to look beyond the treatment, to envision life after the cure. It’s hard, though, to take that step. Looking into the future, planning like healthy people do all the time, means allowing hope to come along on the journey.
What could be bad about a cancer patient allowing him/herself to believe that the journey might not end with palliative care? Seems like that will help improve outcome, doesn’t it? All sorts of research exists regarding how positive outlook positively impacts cancer treatment.
I remember, years ago, spending 5 hours on a plane to San Francisco with a lovely woman, 20 years older than me, who was fighting round 4 of cancer. She was stuck in the middle seat and kept apologizing for the truly extraordinary amount of stuff she brought on the plane (neck cushion, book, crossword puzzles, water bottle, you name it). I’m a light traveler and held some of her belongings on my lap and at my feet, then handed her stuff as she needed it. Had it been pretty much any other stranger I’ve had to sit next to over the years, I might have pretended to fall asleep but this woman was delightful. It’s more than 10 years since that trip and I still think about her and how very alive she was. She told me that she “didn’t have cancer.” It was something she didn’t want so she refused to “have” it. Instead, she said that she’d been infected (in a non-medical sense) by cancer and that she was determined to have it removed, to kick it to the curb like an unwanted visitor.
Somehow she overcame the sick dread of spotting a new tumor or having a PET scan that lights up like a Christmas tree. These are the things that cancer patients dread, and why it can be hard to envision the future. Some oncology therapists suggest coming up with near-future goals: buying tickets to an upcoming play, making plans for a long weekend away. Others suggest actually looking at the future to see what it is going to be like AC (after cancer). Will you continue working at the same job? Are you getting married? Will you stay in the same house, neighborhood, town?
Obviously, it is intended to help patients move beyond the immediate “will I survive?” mindset. In addition, I think this approach might help with embracing the future self (Ken 2.0, if you will) — perhaps he’ll have to live some cancer results (we don’t need to list them but if you are curious I suggest that you Google with caution!) and needs to start to accept that. All of this is an important part of the grieving process (stage 5 or 7 depending on which grief theory you embrace) but grieving, like cancer itself, is very personal. Ken and his family are all grieving but each of us is traveling that path alone. I grieve with Ken but our grief is separate and different. He worries about how we’ll function without him or with a changed him. I worry about how to help him accept the changes to himself.
To be perfectly honest, I am so afraid of what a future without him would look like that I just won’t consider it. There are places one just should not go and things one should just not contemplate. What is the point of thinking about that right now? If that’s the journey we’re going to travel, I will know it soon enough. As my mama would say, I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.
