Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

I have just had the devastating news that one does not want to get - my friend's father has metastases!

I am devastated for this friend and for his family. I know exactly what it feels like to have the tests and to wait for the results I know what if feels like when the doctor tries to avoid your eyes and tell you that he/she has found some results that are most unpleasant. I know what if feels like to know with considerable certainty that you are a walking dead person.

In some ways it is a blessing in disguise. Once you have been diagnosed for cancer it is not at present possible to believe anyone who says, 'congratulations, the operation was a success and you are cured." Rather it is the situation that in most instances you can believe the phrase, 'congratulations, we have staved off death for a period, we don't know for how long but we are hoping for the best. '

I am absolutely sure that this gives the doctors who make the statement a considerable sense of triumph and warmth and a sense of purpose achieved.

I know that for loved ones it provides them with the opportunity to hope and to thank God for a little more time with that person. For the individual with the illness it is a time for waiting for the other shoe to drop.

On the one hand, it is nice to know that for the time being life can return to some level of normalcy. After all to look at, one is OK. The various parts of the body work and get the job done day after day. One is able to eat, drink sleep and perform most of the functions which are required.

On the other, it feels as though one is on death row waiting for the inevitable schedule for execution and with no hope of a reprieve.

I have recently had some postings from people who are still in the state of anger over the news that their husband, son, daughter has cancer.

Anger? Anger with whom?

With an unjust God who seems to reward evil people with long and health lives while those of the loved one is being cut short? Anger with the people in the world who get rich pumping chemicals into our food chain and into the air we breathe and the water that we drink just to make another million or so that they can't spend in their life time? Angry with the governments that have a pandemic on their hands with one in three people succumbing to cancer and who have not found a cure? Angry with all of those people who are daily inventing 'treatments' and getting rich instead of finding a cure?

I guess there are a lot of people to be angry with. Indeed for many of us, when we think back on the abuse we have been responsible for by smoking, by not taking exercise, by . . . we can also be angry with ourselves.

What's the point? Each minute that we spend being angry is another minute that we cannot enjoy being alive. Each angry outburst is merely an exercise in frustration.

Live life for as long as you have and consign worry to the dustbin. Bad news will come soon enough and you need your energy to cope with it when it does.