Five days of new sadness

I’ve just come back from the funeral of a 30 year-old woman who should have lived another 50 years. She’d earned a masters degree in English and was taking the courses she needed to apply to medical school following a first bout of cancer a few years ago. We had talked last fall at the funeral of her photography teacher who was also a colleague of mine. He died of brain cancer, though he had fought off at least two other cancers previously.

…the greatest failure comes when one fails to try.

My student had just come out of the hospital a couple of weeks before but she looked good and we made plans to meet for coffee a few weeks later. Unfortunately, she got hung up on an errand and we missed each other. She had planned to attend the Relay for Life Kick-off Dinner in late January, but didn’t make it. The weather was tough that night—and maybe she knew then that there was something going wrong.

The winter of my discontent

She died unexpectedly last Friday. I got an email from another former student Saturday morning.

It is about saving them all.

I’d already begun to slide into grief earlier in the week. Winter is not an easy time for me since Jane’s death. The house is too quiet. The neighborhood is too empty. The cold makes walking difficult. And the absence of sunlight seemingly too easily leads to Vitamin D deficiencies that can’t always be made up by supplements.

The reality of grief

Grief is not like what they describe in the scientific journals. There is no magic wand that relieves it after the first year, nor apparently after the second. Gradually one becomes better at coping with the emptiness, the guilt, and the anger—but they do not seem to vanish.

He wants to save them all.

I know our friend did not die of NET cancer. She died of another of the seemingly endless varieties of the disease. That her cancer is better funded than NET cancer made no difference. In the end, it killed her just as dead as Jane’s NET cancer killed her.

Every cancer has deadly potential

The truth is that even the cancers we know the most about are still deadly too often.  I have another student whose daughter is fighting one of the childhood forms of leukemia. Thirty years ago she would probably be dead. Today, 90 percent of children diagnosed with her form of leukemia are cured to the point hey can look forward to a normal lifespan.

I have always hated that story.

But for 10 percent of those little boys and girls nothing we have works.

Cancer and cost-benefit analysis

In the world of cost-benefit analysis the bean counters would consider a 90 percent cure rate, “good enough.” But it is not good enough for the doctors, the nurses, the technicians, or the researchers. It is especially not good enough for the children and their families who are in that 10 percent.

The beach is covered in starfish…

Some years ago there was a story making the rounds of teacher conferences about a little boy on a beach. The beach is covered in starfish and the little boy is picking them up and throwing them, one at a time, back into the ocean.

The starfish story

A man comes by and derides the boy for his efforts. “You’re wasting your time,” he says. “You can’t save them all.”

 …for 10 percent of those little boys and girls nothing we have works.

The boy picks up another starfish and throws it into the sea: “But I saved that one,” he shouts at the man.

I have always hated that story.

Saving every cancer patient

I have always hated that story because the boy’s reply is born out of frustration. The truth is he isn’t satisfied with saving a single starfish, or half the starfish, or 90 percent of the starfish. He wants to save them all.

Grief is not like what they describe in the scientific journals.

But he has to shut the bean counter up or he’ll begin to believe the bean counter. And then the starfish will die. And the lives of the starfish all matter to the boy.

Teaching and cancer research

Teaching is not about being satisfied with saving one child from ignorance. It is about educating them all. Medical research is not about saving one person from disease. It is about saving them all.

Winter is not an easy time for me…

Neither teachers nor researchers can afford to be bean counters. They cannot be concerned with cost-benefit analysis. They, like John Donne, are concerned with mankind—and know that every death, whether mental or physical—diminishes them.

The reality of failure

Both know they will fail sometimes, but both know they cannot consider the possibility of failure if they are to do their best work. No matter how much it hurts to fail—nor how great the odds of failure are—the greatest failure comes when one fails to try.

…maybe she knew then that there was something going wrong.

In the starfish story the man leaves the boy to his starfish. He has learned nothing. Perhaps I would have liked the story better if the man, inspired by the boy’s words, began helping to throw the starfish back into the sea.

The battle against cancer ends when we have cures for every cancer for every patient. Help us save some starfish.