Cancer Journal #58 Nov 12

 I want to tell you about my friend, Maria.  I've referred to her before but not by name.  She's the woman that gets Vitamin C infusions the same time I do.  I've spoken of her as the women with whom I have a good rapport.  We yack and yack.  She was diagnosed with Stage IV esophageal cancer a few years ago.  It had been caught so late and was so unresponsive to standard treatment that her doctors gave up on her.  She was told that she did not have many months left to live and that she should get her things in order.

Maria was in her mid-fifties with an adolescent son and a husband with whom she had recently married (I may have that part of the story wrong.  They may have just been living together and got married after the diagnosis.  Doesn't make much difference.)   Anyway, too early to be dying of cancer.  She went passive,  overwhelmed by the news.  Her first husband, the father of the adolescent, had died of brain cancer.  The period of illness was hard for him physically and hard for her emotionally.  Her own diagnosis brought back the same feelings she had had during his illness and immobilized her.  

It didn't immobilize her new husband though.  His name is Miles.  He got energized, researching all sorts of alternate treatments, buying her a bariatric chamber (it boosts the oxygen level  while you're in there) and mixing her up a noxious looking  blend of supplements and herbs that he has her drink/eat every morning.  Ask her what's in there, she doesn't know.  Only Miles knows.  And Vitamin C infusion of course.  Darned if it didn't work!  The tumor in her esophagus shrank and then disappeared.  A CT scan showed nothing in her lymphatic system which is where the cancer had metastasized to.  The woman is cancer free--to the extent that any of us are cancer free.  

Anyway, Maria would be dead for over a year or so if Miles had just let it happen.  I see what he did as nothing less than heroic.  I've told her I don't believe I would have acted as well.  I can see myself just bowing to the inevitable and letting it happen. As it happens, Miles is a client of my daughter who does massage therapy.  I heard about the wife who had just a few months to live but did all this alternate stuff like Vitamin C infusion and was now doing real well.  It prompted me make a call to Spero Wellness Clinic and set up an appointment.  So thanks, Miles!  You're a real life saver! (I've never met the man).*

As I said, Maria and I yack and yack.  Our stories are not totally alike but do share some features.  We have both been terminal although what were months for her are years for me.  Both of us are doing well.  So we have things in common and we have a rapport.  We can be positively merry about imminent death, both hers and mine.  Helps I suppose that it's looking like it's not going to happen to either of us although I kind of think we would be merry about hospice care too.  I don't know that we are going to find out.  I feel so thankful, so fortunate, to be able to laugh about this terminal condition with someone on the inside, not someone who has to have my permission to be light hearted about cancer and without the complication of their worrying about going too far and my signaling that "No, it's OK" and so on and so on.

I tell all this now because I got an email from Maria this week and she and Miles have Covid.   My email back was that that was so exciting! That it would be a pity to go through the Age of the Plague and not actually have had the plague.  I told my wife the news and her reaction was an expression of great distress.  Made me wonder if I really should have been joking about it.  I shouldn't have worried.  Maria's email back said her laughing about it would have boosted the immunity system.  She did allow as how it would not be good to share the excitement with others.  So good to have a friend to share cancer with.  It ought to make the list of the ten best cancer cures.

*Update:  I notified Maria that I had written this blog.  Both she and Miles read it.  Miles perhaps felt a little uneasy with all this hero talk.  According to Maria, "...He also said growing old alone did not interest him, so he had to try to keep me around."  Sorry Miles, you're still a hero in my book.