I have a friend who is my age and is a lot like me. We are going to call her Jill although that is not her real name. She is a very hard working person, always going the extra mile to make sure everyone is happy and well served. She is also a devoted mother and we used to see each other very frequently in arenas when our children were playing hockey.
Last summer Jill called me and was pretty mad when she said: “I promised myself I would not cry!” She went on to tell me that a colonoscopy had revealed a malignant tumor in her colon and that she was scheduled to have it removed and then chimiotherapy. She needed more tests to see if the cancer had spread which I highly doubted since she is so young and they cought it in time…so I thought!
During one of the scans, she suffered a panic attack and could not tolerate being place on a secluded narrow box. It is easy for me to figure out what she was thinking then.
The tests revealed there was a spot on her liver. Her physicians decided to go with a very aggresive treatment and do surgery. By the time she got the surgery a couple of weeks later, there were now over 10 spots. Although everyone is enthousiastic and talking about the “spots” getting removed surgically which they did, I felt like the only person aware of the elephant in the room. They are going to restart another set of chimio. I would choose every possible avenue if I were in Jill’s shoes.
Jill has the best attitude on the world and is fighting this with every once of courage she has. I just don’t know how to help her.
I send her all my love here tonight…because nobody deserves what she is going through.