My grief and NET cancer
NET cancer and my grief over my wife’s death are hideously intertwined in my life. That has rarely been more true than over the last 18 hours.
…save 33 families a day.
I dreamed of Jane last night. I dreamed about a road not taken–a road that led to an earlier death for her–one where we stayed local rather than making the trip to Dana-Farber that September morning. The death was just as awful–but it left me with no sense of purpose–just bitterness and despair.
Killing NET cancer gives me purpose
Not that I do not have days filled with those two emotions now. I do. But there is this sense of mission that helps to pull me clear of the worst those days could be. When I don’t want to get up in the morning–when I want to just lie in bed and do nothing–the voice in my head reminds me I have a cancer to kill and that I will come no closer to that goal if I do not get up and do something.
I cannot change anything about Jane’s death.
But today, even that tonic seems on the edge of failure.
Our NET cancer conversation
Jane asked me this morning why I am doing this. “It can’t be for me,” she said. “I am already dead. What you do will not bring me back.”
“I know that.”
“And I don’t need–or want–some grand monument.”
“I know that.”
I do not know the person staring back at me.
“So why?”
“Because I hurt. And because I don’t want anyone else to hurt. Not this way.”
“You can’t kill death. Even if you cure all the cancers there are, people will still die. And their spouses will still hurt.”
“But they won’t die the way you did.”
The worst of NET cancer
The worst thing about watching my wife die was not the final hours of her life–but the days and weeks that led up to that day.
I watched NET cancer steal her hopes.
I saw it all.
I watched NET cancer make her short-tempered and inpatient.
I watched her dignity die in sheets of gurgling diarrhea she could not control.
I saw it all.
NET cancer creates PTSD victims
And like a soldier who sees his best friend die in combat next to him and looks down to see his own body splattered with the brains and blood and suffering, who hears the final screams and can do nothing about them–it broke me.
‘But they won’t die the way you did.’
I look in the mirror now and I do not know the person staring back at me. He does not even look vaguely familiar. When I go for a walk it takes a conscious effort to keep the pace that was once as natural as breathing for both of us. If I let my focus go, I shuffle like an old man–barely raising my feet enough to clear the rough spots on the sidewalk.
NET cancer nightmares
At night, I don’t want to go to sleep. I find excuses to stay up until midnight and beyond–knowing that in sleep I will not often find rest. Rather, I dream those last weeks in the hospital over and over and over.
I don’t want anyone else to hurt. Not this way.
I cannot change anything about Jane’s death. I cannot change my experience of her death. I cannot change the experiences of the 33 spouses who lost their other half today to NET cancer–or the experiences of the 33 families who will lose a loved one to it tomorrow or the 33 the day after tomorrow.
NET cancer patients–and their families
But maybe, just maybe, the tiny amount we do today and tomorrow and the next day will make a difference five years from now. Maybe by then only 30 families a day will enter this dark land I now inhabit because of NET cancer. Maybe ten years from now only 15 people a day will die from NET cancer.
I dreamed of Jane last night.
Maybe 25 years from now, no one will.
The only thing I know is if we do nothing, nothing will change.
We have to kill NET cancer–not for Jane, not for me–but to save 33 families a day.
