To Those in the Club to Which You Never Wanted to Belong
This blog is addressed to those of you in a club to which you never wanted to belong. The Big C Club – not COVID-19 but CANCER. But, first let’s talk about COVID-19. Then we’ll talk about “the club.”
600,000 deaths. That is the number of COVID-19 deaths the U.S. will probably reach sometime in June. Since the first death in February 2020 and through the cultural and political processes of denial, bargaining, blaming, grief, and perhaps one day of acceptance, it has been a miserable fourteen months of cancelled travel, a wrecked economy for many and a boom for a few, social distancing, stay-at-home, schoolchildren losing in big ways, no in-person worship, culture wars, political strife, Zoom fatigue, COVID-fatigue, family strife, and death. Everyone in this country has been affected in some way. But it is the deaths that have been the most devastating – deaths in the ICU with only a nurse in PPE holding one’s hand, deaths with no accustomed way of public grieving, deaths where bodies are warehoused awaiting some sort of burial, deaths where too many suffered, both the deceased and their loved ones, alone. Deaths, their recognition, and the public permission to grieve were overshadowed by a politics of deflection and distortion. Imagine the loneliness and isolation of those who have lost loved ones. Studies, doctoral dissertations, books, and documentaries will surely be part of the outcome and reflection on this miserable time and what we might collectively learn from it.
Another 600,000 Deaths
But there are another 600,000 deaths. And another. And another. 600,000 deaths are not only the expected U.S. carnage from COVID-19 by June, but it is also the shocking number of people in this country who die each year from cancer. To be precise, 2020 brought 1.8 million diagnoses and 606,520 deaths. There is no vaccine to prevent cancer. When COVID-19 is long gone, the 600,000 deaths per year from cancer continue, and to put that number in perspective, the total US lives lost in combat from all wars, from 1775 until now, is just under 670,000. Let that sink in. It not only speaks of the horrible grief and carnage from COVID-19, it should also open the eyes to the annual cancer toll. So, it is to you who are fighting cancer to whom this blog is addressed.
Just the word, “cancer,” whether spoken by a doctor as a confirmed diagnosis or as something to be investigated, is a shock to the system. Almost all people who hear that word for the first time as a diagnosis never thought it would ever be said to them. Back in 2007 when my sister-in-law, Sherry, was diagnosed with cancer, among her first words after the diagnosis and the impeding treatments of radical surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation were these: “I am now a member of a club to which I never wanted to belong.” My sister-in-law was a valiant fighter. Deep in the Jesus faith as an executive secretary in a large church and part of a family that finds to be biblical the words of the one and only Jimmy V, “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up!” she seemingly beat it. But then because cancer has no conscience, it revisited her. She succumbed on January 31, 2016. I was in San Antonio on seminary business when I got the call. It was just a few days earlier when I sat in her home Hospice room with other members of the family and friends. With guitar in hand we sang Bob Marley’s reggae song, Three Little Birds. The chorus goes like this:
This is my message for you ou!
Don’t worry ‘bout a thing,
Cause every ‘lil thing gonna be alright.
Singing don’t worry ‘bout a thing,
Cause every ‘lil thing gonna be alright.
The worst thing that could ever happen to you will not be the last.
So confident in the hope and promises of the empty tomb, it was Sherry who first said, The worst thing that could ever happen to me will not be the last. It was Sherry Barger whom I called while a pastor in Colorado when a horrible undiscovered final-stage brain tumor took away the 32-year-old mother of two small girls. The girls begged in the ICU unit, “Mommy, please don’t die.” It was Sherry who told me to tell them, Remember. The first person to cry is God.
Somehow growing up and in my early life I had almost no experience with cancer. That changed in the summer of 1986, when as a seminarian I was taking my obligatory unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. I was assigned as chaplain to the east wing on the 5th floor. It was the hematology/oncology unit. For a summer I was immersed in the suffering, fear, trauma, and dancing with death of children with cancers, as well as the shock and numbness of their parents. It was there where I learned a diagnosis of AML (acute myeloid leukemia) meant certain death and a diagnosis of ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) was beatable.
It was that summer when I also learned about the life cycle of support for children and their families with cancer. When a teenage child would be newly admitted to the hospital with a cancer diagnosis, there would be an immediate outpouring of support. Balloons, cards, well wishes, clever teddy bears, and other positive-messaging paraphernalia would fill their rooms. Visitors would come and go like the room had a revolving door. There would be bold statements. “We are going to beat this thing!” But as time wore on, as chemotherapy and radiation ravaged their little bodies, and when you did not know what was worse, the cancer or the treatment, people’s ability to sustain intense concern waned.
The life of a cancer patient with the cycle of treatments and then tests to determine the efficacy of the treatments and then decisions about the next steps while all the time watching lab reports and scans that report things like tumor size, or blast counts, or the size of swollen lymph nodes can be a tortuous grind. I learned that a family with a child dealing with cancer is a lonely life. The child would come into the hospital for 3 days on in-patient treatment, go home and then return two weeks later for another round. The entire 5th floor was like a congregation of sorts. You developed relationships with the kids, their parents, and families and especially the medical staff. It was hard on the medical staff to watch kids suffer and their parents suffer with them. Deaths on the floor were devastating, but rarely did death happen there. It happened at home, usually under Hospice care, when the family had heard and absorbed the words, “There is nothing more we can do.”
Cancer has no conscience
As a pastor I walked with countless persons and their families through a cancer diagnosis and the subsequent journey. Many beat it. Many did not. One lady who was diagnosed with stage 4 and told to get her affairs in order went through Hell and back at MD Anderson in Houston with experimental treatments that miraculously cleared her of cancer. She threw a party for over a hundred people to say, “Thank you,” to all who had a hand in her survival. But some years later the cancer came back. No heroics. No reprieve. Death.
In 1995, Harriet’s mother died after a heroic bout with lymphoma. As we had driven deep into the night to her dad’s house, he stood in the front driveway the next morning and wept. Lt. Colonel Harry Hall Hart had led the first battalion of tank destroyers to successfully land at Normandy and took them all the way to Berlin, while losing many of the men under his command. While standing in the driveway and speaking of his wife’s death he said, “Even from my experiences in the war, I have never seen anything as ugly as that.”
I am in the club.
In 2018 I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. There once was a time when it was an automatic death sentence. One of the toughest parishioners I ever had, a former NCAA wrestler, gallantly fought CML. In his early 40s with three young children, he tried to beat it, but even the heroics of MD Anderson could not hold off the Grim Reaper. In 2001, after decades of development, the FDA approved a drug, Gleevec, that mitigated against CML. Time Magazine declared it a miracle cancer drug. Every night at 9 pm, I take the generic, Imatinib Mesylate, at a cost of $14,000 per month. Thank God for health insurance because I only pay $9.60. As I near the end of a third year fighting this disease, I feel blessed in many ways. The side effects of taking a daily pill that kills cancer are many, but I have deep gratitude for many things – my wonderful wife, children, grandchildren, family, faith, and the will and capacity to still try to save the world. While on this journey, I was also diagnosed with another cancer, underwent proton beam radiation. Late last year my radiology oncologist declared me, with respect to this second cancer, NED, meaning no evidence of disease. I am grateful beyond words. Like the great Jimmy V also would say, Survive and Advance.
The Wider Club
During the wretched year of 2020, if all of the COVID crisis was not enough, our son was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. A clinical trial treatment worked to kick the cancer down the road for hopefully five years before he needs any further treatment. When he was first diagnosed, I was asked if I would join the program of Patient Family Advisors at Winship Cancer Institute. My role means, among other things, that I advise Winship on their practices from the perspective of being a cancer patient, and I get to advise and support others on their cancer journey. My journey has been helpful in walking with one of my very best lifelong friends who is dealing with a wicked brain tumor and horrible lifestyle compromises from the treatments. We speak by phone at least once a week, and Harriet and I pray with him and his wife. He knows the promises of God. He knows the tomb of the crucified Jesus is empty. He knows that there is no situation in life so painful or devoid of hope that God has not already joined him there. He knows that love and life win.
Finding Light
Last week, President Joe Biden addressed the nation and said, “Finding light in the darkness is a very American thing to do. In fact, it may be the most American thing we do.” I am not going to disrespect the President by challenging this statement, but what I do know for sure is that those who have been grasped by the hope and promise of the empty tomb, whether American or not, can find light in any darkness. Cancer can do many things to us, but there are things it cannot do. Last week I wrote to my friend and shared this light with him. It is a light I share to all of you in our club to which you never wanted to belong:
Cancer cannot cripple your love for others.
It cannot shatter hope.
It cannot corrode faith.
It cannot destroy peace.
It cannot kill friendships.
It cannot suppress memories.
It cannot silence courage.
It cannot invade the soul.
It cannot steal eternal life.
It cannot conquer your spirit.
Those things will live forever.
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
