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Patient Story |
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In Memory Of All Cancer Survivors San Francisco, CA United States female Lived with null for 7 months This is an essay from one of my patients, Bill Seimer. I hope you all enjoy it. -Katie Regan, MSN, NP UCSF Hematology OVERWHELMED We've all been overwhelmed at times. Overwhelmed by the things we feel we must do before the day ends. By our need for things, for friends, for acceptance. By our need to win, to be right. To get good grades, make the team, graduate. To find our place in the pecking order of life. Today I'm speaking of being overwhelmed in a different way. A way I've experienced and want to share with you so you might remember when you feel the weight of our existence and wonder if there's no escape. I'm speaking of being overwhelmed by the love of people who care about you. I was a lawyer. I had my own business. I used to go to work at 5 a.m. Did paperwork. Worked on files before the phone started ringing. Stepped outside for a moment to watch the sun come over and then go back inside to work on the next case. Tried to figure out how to take care of people I had agreed to represent. I was privileged to represent people who worked for a living: truck drivers, laborers, nurses, waitresses, motel maids, people who worked hard for little until their bodies gave out. It was a noble cause and a worthwhile occupation. But to be honest, I worked hardest at not being overwhelmed by my sense of my responsibilities. I left the office early. Took Fridays off. Went to Whiskeytown Lake. Hiked. Wrote poetry. My window faced the driveway of the office next door and virtually every morning I would see my neighbor, another lawyer, arrive in his perfectly polished vehicle. Shiny red or black, without a trace of dirt or dust. His attire was equally impressive. Thats the word. I was impressed by the way he looked, by the care he took in his appearance. His office shined too. Even the lawn and the entryway were manicured. We were neighbors for ten year but never got to know one another, except for an occasional acknowledgement of each others existence. He killed himself not long ago. I have always wondered about and searched for the meaning of my life. I've stumbled along and through this existence, wondering when I would figure it out. When the magic would come to me, if it ever would. Sometimes I wondered if I would die in confusion and just have to accept eternal ambivalence as my fate. Now I know that the secret, the magic, is with us every day, no matter how old or young we are. I know this because, last summer, tragedy struck. After months of feeling my energy wane and wondering what was wrong, it was all I could do to force myself into the office to tackle the dilemmas my clients faced. All I could do to rise to the challenge of solving problems and fighting the battles I had to fight. I had nothing left for anything else. I fell asleep in my chair in the early evening. I was willing to rest on the weekends. I scared my wife with my malaise and my talk of retirement. Despite her misgivings, we took a 10-day hiking vacation in Canada. We flew over the Canadian Ice Fields to a remote, canvas-sided lodge next to a pristine lake. I had planned to see grizzly bears, moose and wolves during solitary morning paddles and climb to the top of the surrounding peaks. It takes a lot to overcome my enthusiasm. Instead, I spent my days in a recliner by the wood stove, watching storms roll in from the glacier at the lake's end, to weak and debilitated to physically enjoy paradise. Two weeks later I was flown to a hospital in San Francisco for treatment after the doctors in Redding diagnosed me with leukemia, a disease I had never contemplated having or dying of. During those first weeks in which they poured massive quantities of medicine into my body to kill the leukemia and gave me blood and platelets to save my life, I realized that my purpose was solely to keep breathing. I focused on my breath: in and out, in and out, listening to the sound of it, feeling the flow of life-giving oxygen into my lungs. I was given the gift of being able to separate what was happening to my body: the endless procedures, the pain, the intrusions, the invasions, the swelling and shrinking, the tubes and the catheters, from the speck of life that inhabited some secret place in my brain which told me that as long as I breathed I would live. However, one night my breathing mantra failed. I contemplated tearing the lines out, the tubes that modern medicine used to provide me with drugs and chemicals, through surgically installed ports in my chest, tearing them out and flinging what was left of my body to the pavement, eleven stories below. This, to end the pain, humiliation, degradation and uncertainty. I had a fifty-percent chance of living, they said. I was in the middle of my first round of chemotherapy. My heart had already failed. Ahead, all I could see was months in a hospital with no guarantees. I asked myself if living the tail end of my life was worth it. My nurse, Renata, a wonderfully kind woman from the Ukraine, made some comment. I cant remember what she said, but I realized that night, in my darkest despair, that I was surrounded by love. My wife, my children, my family, my friends, the nurses and doctors, my clients whom I was no longer able to represent, a group of young women in Tennessee training to be nuns, people I didn't even know, were giving me their love. When that realization hit me I knew that I couldnt quit. I owed them, each and every one of them, my best effort. I had to fight until I died because people loved me. The next day I started getting better and, for the first time, I knew I would survive. I do not have the words to tell you how powerful that was. Knowing I was going to survive because of their love. You will face challenges and uncertainty as you go through life. Sometimes you might wonder if there is any way out. I want you to remember that we are all surrounded by love at all times, particularly in our despair. We just have to realize it. We have to allow ourselves to see it and feel it and embrace the joy of it. It is worth living for. -Bill Seimer |
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