Burger Bunch

Last night with my family was very pleasant. All of my siblings are very busy, either with their own lives or the activities of their respective kids; however, it was wonderful that they were willing and able to get together on Saturday at Mom’s to visit with me. According to Lori Hope’s book, “Help Me Live: 20 Things People with Cancer Want you to Know” we all wear many hats during our lives: we are parents, lovers, colleagues, friends, enemies, enthusiasts, etc. When someone is diagnosed with cancer, though, all those other hats are often replaced by: cancer patient. I am not sure what I expected, but the beauty of the evening was that my siblings and mother treated me as they always have, if not a bit more solicitous. I was NOT the family member with cancer; I was simply Merle (or Uncle Merle or Muncle Earl). The only real disappointment for the trip was that I was there for such a short time; I would have liked to spend more time with my family.

I still receive mixed feedback about the length of these posts; however, most people are wonderfully supportive indicating that I should write as much (or as little) as I want. As I explained to my Mom this weekend (who only read my blog once and hasn’t since — she said it was too depressing), I am really writing this blog for me; all the better if readers enjoy following along and some, like Scott who left a comment earlier today, actually find something beneficial out of doing so.

Well, tomorrow’s the day; in a very real way, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life. Oddly, I’m not terribly stressed, but that may be a result of the ice cream (actually “No sugar added yogurt,” but I’m not telling myself the truth) or my lack of any substantial sleep over the last couple of days. Tomorrow is a busy day (I apologize if this is repetitive):

  • 9a – Labs (last time they drew 11 tubes — wonder how many tomorrow)
  • 10a – Meeting with oncologist’s nurse practitioner
  • 11a – Having chemo pump “installed”
  • 12p – First radiation treatment
  • 1p – Initial appointment with an LCSW at Winship

I will be sure to post tomorrow afternoon to let you know how things went. FYI, according to Dr. Kauh (my oncologist), I should have relatively few side effects during the first couple of weeks of treatment. Unfortunately, chemotherapy and radiation therapy both have cumulative effects – as my time on treatment increases, so will the intensity of the side effects.

One last thing, I mentioned in my post yesterday that I wondered if I could do anything to help the pancreas cancer movement; more generally, though, Lori Hope expresses part of what I’m feeling in “Help Me Live”: “When my doctor told me I had cancer, everything that had been most important to me (except my family) took a backseat. My career seemed trivial…if my life were going to end, I would need to accomplish much, much more in order to feel like I had paid my rent on the planet.” The difference between me and Lori, though, is that I already work in an area of public health and, as one friend pointed out, perhaps what would be best for me to do is continue my work as a behavioral epidemiologist in the Division of Violence Prevention. Instead of starting something new, maybe continuing to help identify risk and protective factors that might, someday, be useful in developing effective violence prevention methods is a perfectly reasonable activity on which to focus my attention. Something for me to consider.

Time to start down the yellow brick road…

Merle

Tags: Cancer News, Family, Main, PanCan, Treatment, Work by Merle
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