Try a Little Tenderness

 

May 2021 is a wrap; summer is rolling in with gusto as folks are tentatively climbing out of their pandemic hideaways and getting the hang of what it means to be out in the world again. We're not home free, but it's getting safer with each vaccination. I've spent the past few days enjoying the company of my sister Amy in Reno, and that's been grand. We hiked the graffiti-filled Donner Tunnels (gravel floors still wet and slick from Sierra snow melt); we strolled around the city, and today we kayaked on the sparkling waters of Lake Tahoe under a crystalline blue sky. To cap off a perfect day at the lake, we had lunch and day drank at a posh little place by the water.

This is to say the recent days have been good. Really, really good. 

This past month also gave me the opportunity to work with the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) as a consumer reviewer for the Lung Cancer Research Program (LCRP). In that capacity, I'm getting to read and evaluate from a patient-perspective research proposals for some of the most innovative approaches to treating lung cancer. Basically, I log onto the system, get a sneak peak into the future of lung cancer treatment and say "Wow, that's cool!" I can't go into specifics about the proposals here because those are the rules, folks. But I can say what I am reading gives me hope. Some of the best minds in cancer research are on the job, and that means new treatments for lung cancer are heading for the development pipeline. Fingers crossed that the new treatments reach the patients who need them before their time runs out.

Speaking of which, as a person living with metastatic disease for 3+ years, I've seen too many others of my ilk taken by the disease, in just these short years that I've been paying attention. And it's heartbreaking, not to mention discouraging. Each time I have good scans, I rejoice, thrilled at the prospect of spending more time here with all y'all, grateful for this gift. But now, I have some time behind me as a carcinomie. I'm not as fixated on my own survival thanks to a longish period of stable disease (scans coming up next week...yikes!). And, well, because of social media, and age, boom...all of the sudden, I "know" LOTS of people with cancer, most of whom I've "met" online within the last couple of years. And too many of them are dying. 

I wish I'd been more sensitive to that right from the start; for every bloggy word of my good news, someone else had a 500-page book full of bad news. Grief and hope sit right next to each other at the Greyhound station, neither acknowledging the other's presence. They travel in a tight pair, always. I wish I had had the wisdom to see how tiny the space is between grief and hope, how when one is in that space, there's not a lot of room for grand gestures, or even breath. And I don't mean just for folks with cancer, but really for anyone on any margin, or, well, just anyone. Maybe if I had recognized that sooner I would have treated the world more tenderly. I hope I do going forward.