Perspective

Yesterday we found out that a new friend and colleague at church, a woman my age with a 12-year-old son, has pancreatic cancer. She'd been complaining of stomach aches for a couple of months, and fatigue, but she was otherwise seemingly healthy and vital. On Sunday she and I discussed the possibility that she had developed an ulcer, or lactose intolerance, or maybe gluten sensitivity. Three days later she passed out from a blood embolism, was taken to the emergency room, had a CT scan, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that has spread to her liver. The oncologist told her she might have a year to live, although they can't say anything really until the biopsy results are in.

How to take this in? understand it? accept that it's real? I can't even get my head around it, so I can't imagine what she's going through right now. As a true New Englander, she apologized today from her hospital bed for being "weepy," blaming it on the sedative they gave her during the biopsy. When we left her room, I went into the nearest rest room and burst into tears. And I've only known her for a few months. How must those she's worked with, lived with, loved for years feel? How will her deeply thoughtful, sensitive, pre-teen son make sense of all this once they tell him the full story? (Until the biopsy results are back and the prognosis is more clear, they're leaving the word "cancer" out of the conversation with her son.)

And I thought my mother's brush with emergency surgery last week for a perforated colon that had gone septic had put things into perspective for me—what's a little trouble with getting the truck to pass state inspection and having to borrow more money to buy a new (or newer) car when you put it up against sepsis and surgery? Now with our way-too-young friend's fatal diagnosis, a car loan is really NOTHING. So what if we have to struggle a little to come up with another couple hundred dollars a month—at least we're both alive and as far as we know healthy. We have two beautiful and as far as we know healthy daughters, each with a wonderful husband/fiancé; we have a beautiful house with a beautiful yard, good jobs, a goofy dog, and a fun life together. Bring on the car loan. We'll figure it out. With joy and good humor because, after all, we've got today and with God's blessing tomorrow no matter how much (or how little) is in our bank account.