Every few months friends or family will ask for suggestions on how to support someone with young kids whose whose spouse has been diagnosed with cancer. It's unnerving the number of young families dealing with a parent newly diagnosed with the disease. Recently, a cousin … Read More... about Supporting a friend whose spouse has cancer
Balanced Living with Cancer
One young family’s quest to find balance while living with cancer
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During my usual scroll through Facebook this morning it struck me the number of recent posts from friends and family about someone close to them either dealing with cancer or having recently died from the disease.
I once asked my Mom how many people she knew when she was my age who had cancer? Two people came to her mind. One was an in-law who had breast cancer in her forties and the other a brother-in-law of one of her dear friends who had died shortly after being diagnosed with leukemia, also in his forties. Two.
When I consider my close friends who I have known for more than ten years, I count 16 between the ages of 40 and 55, who have received a cancer diagnosis in the past five years. 16!
Some have told me I am just acutely aware of the cancer around me because of my husband. I disagree. Each of the 16 friends I have known well before my husband’s diagnosis.
Do I know more people than my mom did when she was my age? I don’t think so. She was an elementary school teacher for 28 years. She knew hundreds of families. Cancer diagnosing has improved, so maybe it is earlier detection? Certainly that is part of it, but I don’t think that is going to count for such a dramatic difference – 2 for Mom, 16 for me.
Each time I hear of a cancer diagnosis, especially in someone middle-aged, I find myself focusing on the word ‘why’. Why so many? Why so young? We are good at asking why does cancer spread? Why does cancer come back? If cancer rates are indeed higher among the middle-aged compared to a few generations ago, we should adamantly be asking why?
Do your own count. Unnerving, I know. Count only your friends, who have received a cancer diagnosis in the past five years, are between the ages of 40 and 55, and you have known for at least ten years. Don’t count acquaintances, people you casually know, or coworkers or neighbors unless they are close friends.
Chances are you too know someone close to you, young, in the prime of their life, raising a family, making a go of their career, who have been halted in their tracks by the disease and its treatments. It is a disheartening realization to actually stop, pause, and make a tally. See if you then find yourself asking, why?
Copyright © 2011 Jeannie Moloo. All Rights Reserved.
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