The pill

Can't they just make a pill for it??

If they could just make a pill that for one full day, you could be transported away from the crushing reality of cancer. That for 24 hours you could look at your husband, your children,
your friends and not think: "oh my, how could I ever leave them....let them down....cause them anguish. Why do they have to be burdened? How did this all happen?"

24 hours of normalcy...the old normal....the before cancer normal.
When you worried about your hair and how you looked in a bathing suit.
When your child had not known the fear of "Mommy has cancer."
When there were no questions of why, no thoughts of how could this have happened, and no
doubts about the future.
When you ran three miles on the treadmill and taught kickboxing.
When you still viewed yourself as sexy.
24 hours of no scars. No pain. Great sleep.
A full day out from under the suffocating fact that you are forever-more under some thick type of water, molasses in the winter, slowly drowning inch-by-inch and hour-by-hour.

24 hours without any pills but the one pill to make you forget everything since the first instant you heard your name and cancer together.

The longer I live, the further away I have gotten from mourning my old life that was ripped away with my diagnosis. But I often see other patients whose diagnosis is new and the facts of what they have lost are haunting them. I see it in their eyes, whether they want to come to grips with it or not: nothing will ever be the same again. They will replay their old life and new reality over and over and over in their heads, not able to sleep, not able to yet accept their altered state.

I remember so well a moment I had when I was in between surgery and my very first chemo treatment. We were down on our sailboat, the Slow Dance, for the weekend. Everything on the boat and at the marina was exactly how we had left it four weeks before....but nothing was the same. In a rare moment of raw emotion, I turned to my husband and screamed over and over: "I want my life back!, I just want my life back." I knew this place, this boat, our weekends were never going to be the same. We sold the boat the next month. That part of us gone....a new normal to come.

Over the years since that last day on our boat, I have still lived a great life, a rich life, and a life filled with more joy, love, and faith than I ever thought possible. The new richness and fullness of my life and God's ever-present faithfulness has allowed me to not only survive but become a much better wife, mother, friend, and human being. I am so grateful. But there is still a small part of me that makes me want to look back every once in a while and long for my old life. And for all the things the Lord has done for me, he has not erased my memories or delivered me completely from these dark and heavy waters. I am so saved in spirit...yet I am still fighting against the current, struggling to keep my head above the surface. Cancer has become like constant dark cloud on my horizon. Always within view. Or the constant low hum of a refrigerator....background noise for my life with no letting up, no sweet silence. It is a fact we now always have to factor in...no matter what we have planned or how good I feel.

So if they could just make a pill for us, the ones slowly drowning, the ones who do not know how to keep from looking back and longing for another time, another place, another circumstance. Those of us who feel the constant erosion every day of our bodies and our futures.
Just 24 hours, one more day, to not be the one with cancer on their resume. What I would pay for a pill like that.