Take your bagels and go home! - Part 2

Adriamycin - the dreaded "A" in the ABVD treatment of Hodgkins Disease

By Theresa Thomas (continued from yesterday)

Are you afraid to suffer? I was. I averted my eyes from disturbing television news, didn’t read disturbing newspaper stories, and left the room when people started talking about suffering and tragic circumstances. I didn’t even watch ‘The Passion’ because of the pain it could cause me. So now, the joke’s on me, I guess. Every other Monday I sit for 4 hours with suffering people I can’t avoid. For heaven sake, the first time I walked into the oncologist’s office I was greeted, over the speakers, with the theme song from ‘The Titanic’! How ironic is that?

I, who once confessed anger with my hair stylist for cutting my hair too short and fixating on that for days, now have to contend with a future of, among other things, a bald head. Poetic justice? Perhaps. Or maybe just God making me stand face to face with the Cross.

When I sit for treatment I imagine the lymph growth melting. I close my eyes and think of the Star Wars music as the droids are blasted to pieces, and I imagine that is what my body, with the help of chemical agents, is doing to the lymphoma.

I need this chemotherapy or I could die, but asthmatics need albuterol or they could die too. Diabetics need insulin or they could die. Those with bacterial infections need antibiotics or they could die. And we all know, because the nature of life, that we could also die on a foggy night in a plane crash, or simply driving home from work, minding our own business, eating a taco. Thank God we live in the time period we do with all the medical accomplishments and technology to help us manage challenges that have plagued mankind from the beginning.

Mary sent me some beautiful thoughts on the fruit of all crosses. One was this: “It is like you are a chalice from which your children drink Jesus' Love. Well your 'cup' was not big enough to hold all the graces they needed to be holy... and God makes our hearts bigger through suffering. Now your heart can hold all the love and graces they need... “

And in this respect, I suppose this is a gift. My journey is just beginning and I will need many prayers for myself and my wonderful husband, and children, but, with God’s help and protection, I will come to see this experience as what God intended it to be for me, my family and you. Now, if you don’t mind, please pass the bagels....