If you have ever had a sore back, you will know what happens. Everyone has a theory about how you can fix it. People will tell you about an amazing chiropractor in town, some system of massaging your back with tennis balls, some yoga exercise that helped them that is sure to help you and so it goes on. Everybody has a theory. I have discovered it is the same with cancer. I have lung cancer (mesothelioma) and have been told it will be terminal. But well-meaning people will tell you of some healing formula they are sure would save you. Have carrot juice...(I LOVE raw carrots).. fast... eat heaps.... exercise... have vitamins x y or z ... follow some guru.... go to a faith healer...etc etc. I have a man, bless him, who says he will fast with me for 40 days if I want. He says that will starve the cancer, my body will start to use the cancer tumour for energy once it has run out of fat. (I'd probably have to fast longer than forty days!) And yet I have been told I need to eat more because the cancer is using energy. My muscles are wasting and eating more will help that. I prefer that!
These people mean well, but it is so difficult. Doctors do know what they are talking about. I have seen my x-rays and they are scary. I can feel changes in my chest and breathing. If it was as simple as fasting wouldn't everyone be doing it? I am trying to live as positively as I can, to try to still be useful and make a contribution. I can't drop everything and try all the theories offered. I will end up dead, having spent the last months of my life too busy trying to stay alive to truly live.
Minimise it..
One lady who is battling cancer herself said to me, "Dave you've got too much energy to curl up and die, you'll be here forever." Nice... but energy doesn't really cut it. Another person said, "Nah Dave, you'll still be here in five years time, people like you don't die." .... ah.... wrong! I have seen people far nicer than me die early deaths. "Don't believe the doctors Dave, God decides when you die, they don't know!" That one is problematic. I have been with a family and held their young seemingly healthy baby's dead body in my arms. Did God take her? If he did he's cruel. There are too many issues and questions in my mind to simply say, "God rules who dies and who does not." I messed with asbestos, I did not know how dangerous it was and my work place did not know. Does God decide that he'll stop the laws of nature to save me? Another friend talked to me about all his encounters with asbestos, and it hasn't killed him. "Maybe it won't kill you?" Others tell of some relative who was given a cancer death sentence, but he lasted years. "You could do that!" But different cancer, different treatments - irrelevant to my reality. "Stay positive Dave, you'll beat it!" So it goes on.
It is nice that if thoughts alone could save me, these expressions of hope would do it. But the reality is different. I wonder whether these sorts of statements are expressions of the people themselves struggling to cope with the reality? I believe to be mature I have to face the reality of the prognosis and deal with life on that basis. I am taking Jesus' saying in John 10:10. "I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly." as my compass point. While facing this reality, how can I still live so that I enhance life about me with whatever time I have left? I intend to still live as positively as I can, while I can. I will try to stay as healthy as I can. My wife and I went shopping to buy recommended foods this afternoon. I do hope to keep up some sort of exercise. But I do want to live usefully as long as I am able. Pray for me to do that. Strengthen my resolve to do that. I would love to shy away from the reality of the prognosis and be like an ostrich, with my head in the sand, but I can't. These twinges in my chest, the fatigue and the occasional (at this stage) breathlessness and wheeze will not let me.
I am doing some writing. One is about where I am at in my Christian faith. The trouble is I think I have completed it and I think of something else. The second is an abbreviated history of my life. I hope I get both completed. Wish me luck.
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