Ripe Bananas? Hardly

"Every hour 200 Americans learn that they have cancer."  The PSA caught me by surprise as I was listening to satellite radio in the car.  I wondered how many times I had heard this without noticing.  I checked the Internet when I got home.  It's true.

In the past cancer was of little concern to me.  My family was largely untouched by cancer.  Frankly, I'm embarrassed to say,  I considered it primarily a natural malady of old age.  Sure some kids and younger adults were in its sights but weren't they the exception?  Like ripe bananas, I actually thought of cancer as the bruising and mushiness of human decomposition.  Then my mom died of breast cancer.  She was old--nearly 90--but she was MOM and that hits close to home.   Suddenly cancer wasn't just for other people.  I began to notice more people, boomers around my age, in the Irish sports section (obituaries) of the newspaper.  How could somebody from my generation die of a "lengthy illness"?  Celebrities and sports heroes like Tony Gywnn were  fighting this cancer thing.  (Tony died this past Monday.) How could this be?

Last winter  Non Hodgkin's large B cell lymphoma had the nerve to enter our lives.  The lump my wife had found on her neck was cancer.   Her father and two siblings had gone several rounds with the Big C and lost.  Was Linda to be KO ed too?  We walked around the house in a fog for a few days and slowly began to realize that with good doctors, a positive attitude and the prayers of friends and relatives we would fight this intruder and win.

After nearly six months of chemo and everything awful that comes with it the lymphoma is in full retreat.  Today is Linda's last chemo session and in a couple of weeks she should begin to feel healthy again.  Her hair, unlike mine, will begin to return in a few months and be thick and normal in about a year.  Maybe the two wigs she has been using to hide her hairless dome can be modified to help out this  unfortunate victim of male pattern baldness.  Hey, I'm a veteran and nothing looks sexier than a man in his late 60's with a ponytail.  Perhaps I should check with the VA?

As I sit beside her and watch the last of the "good" poison drain into her body it's impossible not to think of how all of this has changed our lives and, most certainly, my perception of the disease that is cancer.  Two-hundred people an hour should not have to hear the words "you have cancer".  Cancer is a bastard.  I look forward to reading its obituary.