I decided to put down a few thoughts as I sit in the DFW airport waiting for my flight. Arrived early, got my Starbucks, then read my daughter's blog. If there is anything more apt to produce a serious amount of angst in a parent than to read and understand one of your chick's heartache and frustration over a chronic illness, I'm not sure I want to know what it is.
20 years ago who would have guessed that I would know, at a deep and personal level the import of words like oral chemo, GIST, stromal tumors, percussion therapy, main-line, and now iron infusions, B-12 maintenance, Gleevac. These are words, and more importantly, life shifters that have moved and shaped all of us in my small world. To be honest, I don't want to know these words. I don't want to have to contemplate the significance of these words. I don't want to have hiding, barely below the surface of my awareness, the panic that the consequences of these words hold in my world.
But deeper than that, I don't want my daughter to have to know them. I want her world to be words of diapers, juice, Jedi, training wheels, knowing letters, potty training. Two vastly different vocabularies living side by side in my daughter's world, one mundane and shared by many, the other terrible and shared by few.
I will say this, it has made me resilient. There are not many fears left to me from the world. The world can fire me from my job, so what? I get another one. Someone at work or church is mad at me, so what? I might get sick, so what? When threatened in any way, why fear? I have seen true bravery in the face of my child. It has made me impervious to the whims of the world in an odd way.
It has also made me more sensitive to those who share this struggle. I know the terror of losing someone, I know the panic of helplessness, I know the stunning silence of prayer in a dark night.
Ignorance of these things would be nice, but then I would not be me. And those around me would not be essentially themselves. Understanding comes on the heels of heartache.
Godspeed,
Don
1 comment:
I thinkon word you are forgetting that is vitally important is hope. Hope is spoken by anyone and everyone who faces such a tremendous battle. I've shared my own story with you about my dad's battle, and I know Jordan personally. What I also know is the caregiver side of this battle. I worked in the pharmacy at Harrington Cancer Center in Amarillo. My mother is a nurse for a radiation oncologist (the doctor in chrge of radiation treatment for cancer). We both know and share in the joy that is overcoming cancer. Hope is what we as supportive care givers lend to ur patients. Hope is what we give to the families of those suffering. Hope is all we have when we cannot personally fight the fight. Hope is what we get from praying to a God who can change all things! Please keep this word and the front of your thoughts and the front of your comfort. It's the most powerful four letter word I know!
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