Worse than cancer

     Cancer is nothing but sucky, let's establish that off the top. When I was first diagnosed twelve years ago, I had surgery and started chemo almost immediately after, and for a while there, I went into that "survivor's euphoria" -- experiencing an outsize joy of everyday things, all that shit. It was nice while it lasted, maybe about three months. In due time, as I started to recover, the glow wore off and I went back to being myself; that is, my "worldview" (my Bush Doctrine, as it were) snapped back into place and I became appropriately grumpy over little irritations, argued with M, made humor from cynicism, etc. When the shitstorm started again four years ago, I was quite bereft of the smell-the-roses impulse, and it was all fear and sadness. The poorer my health, the lower I feel, the darker my moods, but even during the in-between upsides, I stabilize at my normal true self: optimistic, but looking over my shoulder. 

     None of this has to do with how much I love or appreciate my family. I am keenly aware of time passing, as any parent is when a tiny six year old starts spitting out teeth like she's George Foreman. My heart races when I think about my daughter, and it's literally tough to keep my hands off her when she's with me. I know we have maybe three or four more months of this utter innocence, this enchantment with fairies before -- poof! -- it gives way to something a little more grounded, mature, and "real," and I know this not because I have some enhanced sense of time brought about by illness, but because I'm a mother.

      I don't need euphoria, because normal is so good. I adore my husband and daughter, love my family and friends, love school, love where we live. We are the luckiest people in captivity. 

     It's easy to imagine people not so lucky. I don't even have to imagine them; some of my friends are not so lucky. I think of the heartbreak, the complete despair, of friends whose marriages are in flux and I hurt for them. To me, probably because of my rock-solid base with M and A, it would feel as though I'd been catapulted into another universe if my family life came undone. I cannot fathom anything worse. 

     Then there are the people I see in the infusion center every week who're in worse shape than I am, or appear to be. Some of them have cancer, some diabetes or kidney disease or immune suppressions that require perhaps daily professional care. Some of them have no family or friends to lean on. There is the hunched man who goes around our neighborhood with a mostly-empty shopping cart. There are people who hate their jobs, their circumstances, their lives. People who're stretched too thin, barely getting by on a few hours of sleep and taking care of small children and aging parents. People who are losing their homes. People who are unemployed and have no health insurance. (Jesus God, protect M's job and preserve our health insurance.) People who're losing or have lost loved ones. People whose child is desperately sick; who've lost a child. (The worst of the worst. I'd lose my fucking mind.) People who are dispirited for whatever reasons, and find the world too much, just too much. I don't have to look beyond the confines of my own little orbit to find these people -- they're right here, in the neighborhood, in the local newspaper, at school, friends, friends of friends... never mind political upheaval and wars and famine and disease and unrest around the globe.

     All these situations are, to me, worse, much worse, than cancer.