After a joyous weekend celebrating Thanksgiving (twice) and attending my heretofore mentioned daughter's premature (by a few weeks) 40th birthday party we returned home from our multi-day jaunt around California's Orange and San Diego Counties to an ominous email from the wife of a dear friend. "Fred is really not well enough to call ..." the email closed with this sobering phrase. Now, I have changed my friend's name here to protect his closely guarded privacy but I can't change the facts, as much as I might desire. Knowing that my friend has had an up and down battle with a serious illness I was fearing the worst. I sent a follow up email hoping to learn more and later made a phone call to "Fred's" wife. What I knew before that telephone conversation was that my friend had battled and, for more than 10 years, held at bay perhaps the most confronting enemy most of us boomers face, Cancer. Originally he had been diagnosed with a somewhat rare type of abdominal Cancer that responded successfully to treatment. A little more than a year ago the Cancer reoccurred in his lungs as a metastases of the disease previously believed in remission. After some intensive chemotherapy and a full course of targeted radiation Fred and his family were hopeful the worst was behind. However, a followup scan revealed some newly identified lesions in his brain. The recommendation, in which Fred engaged optimistically and with all the enthusiasm he could muster, was to have a very intense form of radiation therapy targeted at those lesions festering inside his skull.
My brief conversation with Fred's wife confirmed my assumption that this most recent attempt to blast away the abnormal cells did not succeed. The conversation ended with Fred's wife bravely explaining they were following the latest recommendation of the physicians, hospice care, which I have come to learn over my lifetime is the equivalency of the doctors throwing up their hands and waiving a white flag. Now Fred is a strong man; He fights this battle with more grace and dignity than one could imagine; He has held his head high in the sea of doubt all the while grabbing the life preserver of Positive Mental Attitude; Fred might just beat this yet; There are incredibly high odds against him.
I went to see Fred yesterday. He is surrounded by loving family and friends that are doing their utmost to keep his spirits high and his view firmly fixed on the goal of survival. We had a good conversation all the while avoiding the elephant in the room. We talked about the weather, politics, the real estate market and the ills of our society. We brazenly slandered the common enemy we have both faced over these past many years: The Big "C". When I left Fred I didn't say goodbye but assured him I would see him again soon. As I shook his hand upon leaving the table where he was seated the look in his eyes gave me reason to pause. I wasn't immediately sure what he was trying to communicate but I couldn't get his gaze out of my mind. When I awoke this morning after processing the experience in my dream state I was sure of the meaning. It wasn't fear and it wasn't sorrow, it seemed, but defeat. It made me very sad now that I have had the opportunity to think about it.
Other than grandparents and relatives of friends that passed for the most part from expected causes due to their advanced ages, I was only touched by death in a very cursory way during the first 55 years of my life. My parents are both still alive, in their 80's, as are my 6 siblings. I was aware of acquaintances and co-workers that died at different times during my adult life but save for one caring young woman that lost her battle with brain Cancer I was not particularly close to any of them.
The shit storm started in earnest for me about 3 years ago. Among the confrontational events, my mother-in-law died of stomach cancer on New Year's Eve 2008. My only son, Geoffrey, died in October, 2010 (read my blog) from Lymphoma after previously battling Hodgkin Disease. I was diagnosed with tongue Cancer in January of this year and had a series of surgeries to defend against that intruder. I attended my 40th high school reunion this past summer and found that many of my high school contemporaries and/or their spouses were no longer with us, most of those missing succumbing to Cancer in one form or another. I am well aware that many of my friends make trips to their oncologist and various infusion centers part of their daily routines. I've heard the argument that we are turning the war on Cancer in our favor, that if we just invest a few Jillion more dollars into research and the development of new drugs and treatment protocols that Cancer may exist only in whatever form of electronic media takes the place of history books in the future; that the numbers of people afflicted with Cancer are greater than ever before primarily because we have developed more and better techniques for discovering the runaway cells. I'm not sure I buy it. The rate of Cancer incidence continues to increase while the death rate seems to be falling slightly, the number of people that die from Cancer has shown no improvement over the last decades as our population increases offset the reduction in the rate at which those infected are claimed by the insidious disease.
My son died last year from the same type of Lymphoma (Diffuse Large B Cell) that I was diagnosed with in 1998. There is no other genetic link. None of my brothers or sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces or nephews ever had the disease. I scratch my head in wonder as I have a difficult time accepting the argument of coincidence. Geoff was raised for the first 10 years of his life in a neighborhood that had previously been agricultural land in the the city of Irvine. No doubt, now banned chemicals in the form of pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides and the like were liberally applied to the soil that became the base upon which homes, parks and schools were built. We now know that our soldiers and sailors that served in Vietnam have and continue to develop various Cancers at rates that far outweigh the statistical probabilities of coincidence to the point that for certain types of cancers "it is presumed by the Veterans Health Service that your cancer is a result of your service." according to the United States Department of Veteran's Affairs. The causation of this proliferation of Cancer among those in Vietnam is thought to be Agent Orange exposure. Agent Orange contained chemicals referred to as Dioxins. Dioxins are thought to be a probable carcinogen. Dioxins were a common in herbicides and defoliants that were used domestically until they were deemphasized beginning in the mid 1980's.
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