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It felt like I had been hit by lightning.

"Gabriel," my sister Candace said with a voice that was close to breaking, "I have breast cancer."

After a moment of stunned silence, not sure I had heard her right, I said something stupid like, "Are you sure?"

"They’re doing a lumpectomy, and then they’re talking about radiation, chemotherapy and hormone treatments."

She continued while I sat numb, listening on the phone to the litany of assaults upon her body that she was about to begin.

"Do you have to have all the other stuff after surgery?" I wondered out loud. "If it’s all in one area and they remove it all, why do you have to still do everything else?"

"Just to make sure," she replied. "The other therapies make it less likely that it will ever reappear. And since I’m so young, with children, they don’t want to take any chances."

She paused and swallowed. "And neither do I."

I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My little sister, the only birth-related sister I have (the other eight being foster sisters) and the one I’ve known since her birth two years after mine, just told me she had a disease that she could die from.

Because I have worked at a hospice for many years with people living the last months and days of their lives due to cancer and other diseases, my first reaction was that she was going to die.

As if reading my mind, she said, "The odds are really good that it will all work out fine, but I wanted to let you know."

She was right: The odds for full recovery from early-detected breast cancer are very good and have continually improved over the last 10 years.

But knowing that fact didn’t help much when I was used to seeing the few people who had tried everything possible and still died from the end stages of the disease.

"Have they told you about all the side effects?" I asked, aware that, at least in the past, physicians and nurses sometimes minimized the amount of discomfort and reactions that can occur from chemotherapy, radiation and hormonal therapies.

"Yeah," she said. "They told me about all the worst things that could happen. They said they had to tell me, even though none of them would probably occur."

Sure, I thought, I’ve heard that before, then seen people get as sick and tired as an old dog and feel like the treatment was killing them worse than the cancer.

But I couldn’t tell my sister that.

At least I didn’t think I could at the time. I wanted to be hopeful and supportive, so I said, "Good, I’m sure you’ll do real well."

She went on to describe when, how and what would happen, and how she had discovered the lump. She said that in some ways it was a relief at least to know what it was and why she had been feeling so uncomfortable.

I asked the usual questions. "Do you want me to come up and help with the kids? Is there anything I can do?"

"No," she replied. "I’m OK. Mark (my brother-in-law) will watch the kids, and Mom and Dad and other friends are all going to pitch in. The people at work told me to take as much time as I needed."

Being told that you or someone you love has a life-threatening illness seems to bring up two strong, common reactions:

My first reaction to Candace’s news was intense anxiety and fear.

After her surgery had passed and treatments began, I started to look at our relationship, find some meaning in what was happening and appreciate the closeness we have.

Her reaction, from what she told me, was much the same.

If there is any blessing or hidden golden lining in confronting and living through, or dying with, a life-threatening illness, it must be the sense of presence and appreciation it can give us for the short lives we are living.

It makes our mortality real and thus provides a container for the preciousness and value of every life.

Before Candace was diagnosed with cancer, she would have been the last person in the world to seek counseling or attend a support group.

I don’t know if that was because our mother had always tried to get her to do so as she was growing up, or because it was something I have always been involved in.

But after her surgery, she started seeing a private therapist, then attended a cancer support group.

I was really taken back when she told me she was utilizing that support.

As the months went along, Candace told me of the insights and changes that counseling and the group were creating within her and how she realized that she has far more choice in how she chooses to live her life than she had previously envisioned.

I guess that’s what people mean when they say that having cancer was a blessing, because it helped them to wake up and live life, instead of being a victim of life.

Luckily, after two years, Candace is done with all her treatments and is free of any signs of cancer. I think she sees life differently now and has a deeper awareness, understanding and compassion for others.

She’s not as afraid of sickness and death as she had been and, thus, is able to help others who are confronting the same thing.

I wish there were a switch we could turn on when we hear bad news, a switch that takes us immediately to hope, meaning and compassion.

But more often than not, anxiety, fear and apprehension take us first on the roller-coaster ride of grief.

If we can remember, upon hearing bad news, that feeling anxiety, fear and helplessness is normal, expected and understandable under such circumstances, perhaps we’ll be better able to acknowledge those reactions and use the information as a teacher for clarifying our values, instead of a doomsayer predicting a horrifying future.

Gabriel Constans is a counselor at the Center for Grief and Loss at Hospice Caring Project of Santa Cruz County. His book, "The Goddess of Cancer and Other Plays," deals with issues of anticipatory grief and is available at: www.gogabriel.com.

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