A Little Out Of The Box, But I Just Feel The Need To Speak Up
If you have been around a while you may or may not know that my father died of cancer 4 1/2 years ago. I can’t tell you enough how much I am growing to have a great lothing for cancer. I disliked it before, but the more and more I hear of people having it or the way it comes into peoples life and messes with all parts of it, the worse the hate gets.
I recently found out of a friend of my husbands who is in his early 20’s just recently finding out he has testicular cancer. He isn’t married, but the cancer is pretty much through most of his body. There is also a friend I have who is currently fighting it and going through treatment after treatment to try to save his life so he can see his 4 kids grow up. Then last night I was watching Extremem Makeover Home Edition and this amazing family who had opened their home to so many children, had to fight that fight as well.
I just can’t believe how many people are lost to the disease and it seems that there is a bit more awareness to it, but more money gets pumped into other things when there are thousands dying each day ( in 2006 is was about 1500 a day). I can’t even express to you what this disease does to a family. The person who gets it is constantly being treated and tested and having scans. most of the time treatment takes hours at a time and the spouse or parent of the person who has it sits there while it happens. The patient also is constantly worried of what will come next. they are hopeful for more, but are worried that their loved ones will be ok.
The families try to stay hopeful as well. They tell their loved ones that they can fight it. They try to encourage them to fight it with all they have. Yet in the back of their mind is a constant fear of everything going wrong. of their loved ones not being able to make it and for them to be left without them. It is a life of fear and hurt and not understanding why this is happening.
My Father had pancreatic cancer. He lived in pain most of the last year of his life. Most people hurt a lot physically through the treatments. But the thing that happened to our family that I will never forget is that we have been able to grow together. We forgot about all the fluff of life. All the busy things that everyone gets so caught up in and we were able to focus on what is most important. This horrible disease brought us together. And the whole time this was happening was why did it take so long for us to be this way. Why did it take his horrible disease to bring that out in us. I think it was at that point that I realized that my family could make it on very little. that as long as we had our basic needs met that we didn’t need a lot of the fluff to make ourselves happy.
My point in bringing all this up is to tell you all how much I hate cancer and how much I want to find something to help others. If it is a cure great if it is a better way to cope so lives are altered quite so much, anything to help others to not feel so shaken by the whole experience. I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I can do. So I am wanting to open his up a bit to you my readers. I want you to have a chance to share your story. And I also want to bring awareness to the subject on all levels. If you have any experiences you would like to share please feel free to share them in the comments, or to email them to me. I will be posting stories as I get them so others can gain the understanding of what the experience is like and how you can help!
