I know a woman for the past 25 years who has become a great friend.
Eleven years ago, I was seated in her kitchen speaking with her when she received a call from her doctor at the Mass General.
She had recently taken a full round of blood tests, and an MRI as part of full physical. She was 56 at the time, and in good health.
As she talked to her doctor she seemed to recoil just a bit and then asked her doctor: “Are you sure?”
So what’s up?” I asked her after she got off the phone.
“I have ovarian cancer,” she said.
A long moment of silence generated a great deal of uncertainty and some fear.
“I have to go in next week and be further examined. Then the doctor said he’d determine a course of action,” she added.
One moment we were talking as though nothing in the world mattered very much.
A moment later, after a phone call from her doctor, she had become inextricably involved in a fight against cancer, indeed, in a fight for her life.
My friend was a stewardess for many years and then became a teacher. She speaks four languages. She’s very bright, very attractive, and for her, life was all about travel and adventure…until that call eleven years ago.
At the time she was married but about to be divorced, the mother of a young daughter who had just entered high school.
Her daughter was my daughter’s best friend.
This began my friend’s fight against ovarian cancer.
First and foremost, ovarian cancer is a killer. It either gets women early or later but there are no reprieves from the ultimate outcome of the battle.
For nearly a decade after that harrowing phone call from her doctor informing her she was sick with cancer, she has fought to stay alive.
She has suffered through years of medications and chemotherapy and the ups and downs that comes from fighting a killer.
And for the past 11 years, she has always come through bad stretches to regain her balance and to move forward with her life…until six months ago.
Six months ago she got the flu, the chemotherapy stopped working, her numbers went up, the growths throughout her body grew larger and for a while, it looked as though the end was coming.
She fought back. With experimental treatments, she recovered. The growths shrank but did not disappear as there is no cure for ovarian cancer. Her numbers dropped. She recovered. She looked good. She travelled a bit. She seemed at the top of her game.
Recently, the chemotherapy has again stopped working. It has also made her deathly ill – as chemotherapy is poison trying to kill the cancer.
She has lost weight. She began losing her hair. She lost a great deal of her energy. She had a persistent cough. Her numbers sky rocketed, a sign the cancer is spreading. Her doctor told her the caner was inside her lungs, which is why she was experiencing difficulty breathing.
Now she’s on oxygen, more of less confined to an existence inside her home with her daughter caring for her, and she is awaiting the outcome of a final try at finding a treatment that will reverse her condition.
This time around, however, her doctor has gently reminded her to be prepared if the cancer treatment doesn’t work.
What exactly does that mean?
It means she has a good chance of dying – and she does not want to die.
We, her dear friends, don’t want her to die.
The oxygen has perked her up a bit and other than growths inside her lungs, the cancer is not bothering any of her vital organs.
In other words, she is not at the end of the line but the end of the line is drawing closer.
My friend is not someone who wants therapy. She’s a realist. She is preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
She will begin experimental treatments next week.
Those treatments need to work or…she knows she is going to disappear.
That’s a real tough reality to live with every day.
It is an impossible reality to live with. She is still fighting for her life, as she’s fought for 11 years.
She’s an entirely different person than she was just five months ago.
And now she must be on oxygen probably for the rest of her time on this earth.
She has resigned herself hang in there. Her condition seems to be worsening from week to week.
What a thing, to be suffering from ovarian cancer.
I’m not one to pray.
But I’m praying for my friend.