I hate cancer. You do too? Funny how things come together in social media.
Inspired by And Cuisine for All, our masthead went pink this month to support Breast Cancer Awareness. Then I noticed the Versatile Blogger button on Life is a Bowl of Kibble and discovered Jeffrey Miskell who designed it. Decided I needed a button too. Asked around my blogging friends, tapped into picnik.com and voila! Created my first button-badge-image widget.
Introducing Pink October. A small, defiant fist raised in the face of cancer.
I invite you to use this button in your social media this month. Copy and paste it on your blog or website to honor survivors, those battling cancer, and those who’ve lost loved ones in the fight. Pray for an end to all cancers.
I’m serious. It’s free for the taking. Grab it here, use at will, and pass it on.
In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Romans 8:37 NIV
The man reading with my son in this picture is my Uncle Abe. He should be dead.
But he isn’t. This picture was taken in June. Abe’s still very much alive and well.
In late 2007, Abe began having chronic, acute digestive issues. After lots of tests, waiting and misdiagnosis, the real diagnosis fell like a ton of bricks.
Abe had a cancerous tumor on his right kidney. It could kill him. However, it was not responsible for his digestive issues.
So after a CAT scan and more waiting, the second diagnosis fell. Abe also had a cancerous tumor on his pancreas.
Anatomy is not my forte, nor is math my uncle would tell you. But I know you need your kidneys and pancreas to live. And I know my show biz obits. Pancreatic cancer killed Patrick Swayze in 2009 after a 20-month battle.
Uncle Abe was a dead man.
My experience with cancer and close relatives equals an immediate death sentence. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
I could hardly speak to Abe on the phone without crying. I knew I would never see him on earth again alive. That was 2008.
This is 2011.
Abe has always had a special something. He lives out loud. Gives generously. Exudes resilience. Manages to be both realistic and positive.
But that doesn’t buy a ticket to a cure. Or even a remission. Plenty of people who die of cancer have those strengths and more.
I don’t know why he survived and others don’t. I don’t know how he survived.
At 68 years of age, the man underwent a major surgery called the Whipple Procedure. And removal of his right kidney. And chemo. And radiation. For two cancers that should have killed him.
Yet today he is well. Thinner than he used to be, but just as sharp, sassy and humorous as ever.
Unashamed, he openly shares his experience. Credits God with sustaining him, providing the doctors and treatments, and letting him live. His Creator simply did not allow him to die yet.
A snapshot of Uncle Abe wouldn’t be complete without mentioning music. Abe is a masterful pianist and singer.
resilience
He’s directed or accompanied music in churches and choirs for most of his life. He sings and plays at nearly all our family reunions, weddings and funerals, including my mother’s funeral when she died of cancer in 1996.
Upon release from his treatment, Abe picked up right where he left off, playing and singing. He accepted a part-time job as music director for a small church. We attended that church with him and my aunt the weekend we visited them.
Abe sang with abandon. Gleefully he called my husband the tenor to join him. He worshipped with vulnerability, as one who was dead but is now alive.
When I spoke to him last week about this post, he was preparing to sing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in German with a collegiate choir. He’s 72, but I’m sure he’ll fit right in. Abe still has his edge, now tempered by fire.
On my bed I remember You;
I think of You through the watches of the night.
Because You are my help,
I sing in the shadow of Your wings.
I cling to You;
Your right hand upholds me. Psalm 63:6-8 NIV
Great is Thy Faithfulness is a cherished hymn. Sara Groves sings a beautiful interpretation in He’s Always Been Faithful.
Thanks to Tim Robbins, writer/director of Dead Man Walking, for inspiring this post’s title.
Recently had my mammogram. I have these cysts my OB/GYN wants to watch, bless her heart.
The tech at the breast health center told me the cysts are harmless fluid-filled sacks embeddedin my fibrous tissue. She said this as she wrenched my flesh into the giant panini maker.
Terrific. My lovelies are small and sagging already. Now they’ll be flat too.
I’m thankful for the screening and relieved for the benign results. I’m also poignantly reminded that some in Washington consider it a drain of resources to screen these harmless cysts. Thank you, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
These cysts don’t pose a risk to me now. Why waste the money?
Problem is, like some politicians, disease can be random and unpredictable.
Mammograms exist to identify abnormalities early. And early is when you may still have a chance to survive them.
True proponents of life-saving quality healthcare would throw the full force of their support behind preventive technologies. Then they would get to work figuring out how to make them affordable.
But the capitalist option is unfair, whines the left. But the socialist option is evil, whines the right.
Come on, people. Is that the best you can do?
This is America. We invent things here.
Nobody likes President Obama’s healthcare plan except the folks who wrote it. Lord knows no one else read it.
Repeal it already and come up with something better.
Because if there’s one thing I hate more than mammograms and short-sighted politicians, it’s cancer.
So bring on the pokers, the prodders, the scans. The cultures, the ultrasounds and the mammograms. I’ll pay for them out of my own pocket if I must.
But don’t stand in the way of the tests and treatments that could save my life. Don’t ration, diminish and dumb down my care.
Battered as it may be, and in some places flattened, the length of my life is not for any government to decide.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:16 NIV
Thanks to Carl Carlton whose 1981 hit She’s a Bad Mama Jama inspired the title. Click here to listen on YouTube and start your weekend dancing.
