Emerging from the valley of the shadow

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, cancer, cancer survival, cancer treatment

Beating cancer takes a powerful team. Of course, we need doctors: surgeon, oncologist, radiologist, and so forth. It also takes committed family and friends. What I went through late in 2000 and for the next six months was pretty rough. A highly expert surgeon rearranged my insides, removing a couple of feet of colon and a foot of ileum and fat containing more than forty lymph nodes. An oncologist who had been dubbed "the one I would go to" by most of the local physicians put me through six months of chemotherapy. Then I had five years of annual colonoscopies and CT scans and quarterly blood tests. Since then I've had a colonoscopy every three years, until recently the gastroenterologist said, "There were no polyps, this time or last. You can wait five years this time. I guess that is as close to cured as one can get.

Clea Shearer had breast cancer, and while her experiences were not the worst possible (short of dying), they were worse than many and much more difficult than mine. She relates her experiences in Cancer is Complicated: And Other Unexpected Lessons I've Learned. Where my chemo substance, 5FU, can cause nausea and hair loss, in my case I had neither, but rather six months of being in a good mood almost all the time. I remarked to a friend, "5FU is the best antidepressant ever!" Clea was given a substance they call Red Devil, and it could only be used at two-week intervals, sometimes three; it was that debilitating. Once she was somewhat recovered, she also underwent a series of radiation treatments that left her with burns that took months to heal.

Guess what? She got through it. As she tells us, her husband, her children, her mother (who spent most of the saga with her constantly), several friends—some she was able to see face-to-face, and more via phone or video calling—and the loving care of quite an array of surgical and oncological nurses, all upheld her and encouraged her at every stage.

I also have quite a social and church support system, but I think Clea has me beat hands down in that department.

Many take this verse as symbolic: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I do not fear evil, for You are with me." (Psalm 23:4) Although it symbolizes the death and resurrection of Jesus, to David the psalmist it reflected a harrowing experience that he had survived. It gives comfort to us also, when we pass through a harrowing experience. I created this image in Leonardo AI's Flow engine, to show that we don't pass through alone, and that there is "light at the end of the tunnel" that is not an oncoming train but a doorway to a renewed life.

Clea is in the fourth year of a ten-year follow-up regimen of tests and hormone treatments; her tumor was hormone sensitive. At age 44 (according to Wikipedia), she is a little more than half my age. May she live a long and increasingly pain-and-disability free life! She intends her book to encourage not just women with breast cancer and recent survivors, but all cancer patients: Cancer is indeed complicated, but that is because we are complicated. Our doctors have their work cut out for them, figuring which approach will work to rescue us, with our unique biochemistry, in the face of a disease that is equally complicated.

I am very thankful I read this book.