I just heard this said by a young girl on a St. Judes’ commercial. You may or may not know of St. Jude’s – it is a cancer hospital in the United States for children. All families whose children are treated there are there free of charge, no charge for treatment, accommodations, travel, nothing, it is a wonderful organization.
What this young girl said is exactly true. THE HARDEST PART OF HAVING CANCER IS KNOWING YOU HAVE IT. Perhaps I can explain what that means to me. Once you have received the diagnosis, everything you do, say, think is affected by the knowing.
When you do normal things, you think, ‘ well, maybe I’m okay, I can still do that’.
When you have a pain anywhere in your body, you think, ‘ is that cancer too?’
When people are supernice to you, you think, ‘maybe I’m sicker than I think’. I know, I know, they don’t know anything but the thought is still there.
When people in the doctor’s office and hospital are really nice or really accommodating, you think, ‘they know that I’m going to die, that’s why they’re being so nice and offering so much help’.
When you have a few minutes and everything is really quiet, you think you can see inside your body and see the cancer and it’s scary. You have images and visions of it moving and growing in your body.
There is so much happening and so much that is new that you are scared most of the time. New tests, new language, new pains, new scars, new pills, new people, new doctors. Now I’m not saying that it’s not handled well, my doctors have been straight forward, kind and helpful but it’s still scary.
Many times conversations go in a direction that just take you back to it even when the conversation is about something completely different. Tonight, my sister-in-law and I were talking on messenger and I told her I was writing a blog and I might publish it, I might not. She replied, “well, at least you are getting it off your chest. Uh-oh, you know what I mean”. I did but replied that no matter what, that was funny! BUT, it was still about the cancer. See what I mean?
And the worst is, it’s hard to tell people and they don’t know why it seems that it’s all you think about. It’s like the little girl said, it’s the knowing.
