continued from Chapter 7: part 3
Once the word was out friends relayed to us any positive information they had about his disease. A lot of our friends are writers and researchers and some automatically set to work investigating, bless them. None of them felt shy about asking for details and I clearly remember one man, renowned for his writing on medical subjects, asking Hal to bring all his medication to the phone to read off the labels to him. Hal basked in the outpouring of affection and caring he was hearing from his peers.
The best thing for us about spreading the word was that many friends made a point of phoning regularly to chat, or meet Hal for regular lunch dates as well as keeping us supplied with anything new they'd learned about the research going on.
On a couple of occasions he was astonished to learn that close business clients also had fought through cancer. One woman told him she'd had a mastectomy three years before followed by radiation treatment and he never knew. Thinking back, he remembered he lost touch with her for a long while and he thought that she had tired of his work and had found other writers. In reality, she had been in treatment and chose to keep her cancer private, and that left him believing he had failed. Another client confided that he had been written off twenty years back with a form of bone cancer and he was doing well, with no trace of the disease.
This is the real benefit of going public. You learn in your own small circle just how many people are on close terms with the disease and are living good lives despite this intrusion. You're suddenly part of an enormous community of positive people who savor every good moment of each day.
It did backfire once. Hal phoned my mother in Vancouver to tell her the news, once he was out of the hospital and feeling good.
She was naturally shocked and tearful.
A few days later she called when we were reading in bed.
I picked up the phone and she was weeping. I did my best to reassure her and told her how well Hal was feeling.
Pause. “Dear, will you be coming back home to live?” As in, when he dies.
She wasn’t fooled, after all her brother had died of liver cancer. Just the same, I wasn’t prepared for a conversation of that sort and I tried to make a joke of it and hung up as quickly as I could.
Hal heard enough to know what she had probably said and he was amused. I was not.
When you are taking treatment you will probably lose weight and look like hell and that's the time you run the risk of bumping into friends who haven't seen you for a while. Sometimes they will give a tight-lipped grimace passing for a smile and choke out, "You look wonderful". The more experienced ones who had either been through cancer or witnessed its stages through relatives or friends were more inclined to look knowledgeable and say, "Ah, you've begun chemo, haven't you?" That's O.K. Chemo can save your life.
The worst experience for us, unexpectedly, came from two members of the medical profession, both friends. This was about the time that Hal was visibly failing. First, a doctor friend came to the house to drop off work- related papers, took one look and visibly flinched. The second time it was a former nurse who dropped by; she wasn’t adept at hiding her shock and she had tears in her eyes.
If you're working on the should- I- or- shouldn't- I- tell conundrum, sort it through this way:
What are you afraid will happen if you tell? Sometimes you will see pity, or sympathy or sorrow or just plain relief it hadn't happened to them. Give your friends a chance; it's important for them to work their feeling through and at least some of them will give you strength and support when you need it most. Besides, you use up too much precious energy trying to remember who knows what.
If you want to maintain your privacy, then pull together a supportive and trustworthy group, so that you can sound off to someone. If you haven't got family or friends around, let go of some of that pride your pride and find a support group. Sharing your feelings can make you well. Swallowing all your fear and frustration can literally kill you.
continued in chapter 8: part 1
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