Always Something

Friday is a big night.  I'm the captain of a Relay For Life team, and our event is on Friday.  This will be the seventh time I have done this, but it's been five years since my last Relay, and a lot has happened in those five years.  For example, two kids, and countless new intimate journeys with patients and friends of mine who have been battling cancer.

I was struggling to reconcile those two things this afternoon as I explained to Oliver the concept of Relay for Life.  He and Charlie will be there with me and Michael on Friday, so it occurred to me that I should be telling him about what's going on.  I told him that we were going to a big celebration on Friday, and I drove him to the track where we would be walking.  I told him that there would be bounce houses, food, music, and lots of people.  The party was to help raise money for people who are really sick with something called cancer.  I told him that people with cancer needed lots of things to help them, because they can be sick for a long time.  Doctors have medicines for cancer, but sometimes people can't get rid of their cancer, even with those medicines.  So we need money for scientists to find more medicines to make them better.

"Oh," he said after every detail.

I didn't tell him that people can die from cancer.  I didn't tell him that a lot of the luminaries Mommy was making was for his Great Grandpa and Great Aunt who died from cancer.  That Mommy takes care of  people who are dying from cancer.  And I most certainly didn't tell him that kids can get cancer.  That Mommy took care of many, many kids who have cancer, and that some of them died too.  Some of them who were 4 years old, just like him. 

This is why I walk.  Because while I tell my preschooler about helping doctors find more medicine for cancer, my voice is wavering and I am actively holding back tears; I am looking at my own child,  remembering so many others, and saying a desperate prayer.

Hospice nurses hate to hear the words, "there's nothing else we can do."  Because even when the prognosis is bad, even when there is no more treatment that can be tried, there is always, always something we can do.  We can make pain better.  We can hold hands.  We can provide comfort and presence.  We can pray.  And we can always, always, hold onto hope.

Please join me in doing something.

 
http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?fr_id=51717&pg=personal&px=33864588


Here's to hope.