Dear Oncologist
Our first opinion was given to us in a closet-sized room where an oncologist, palliative care assistant and a priest walked in. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? I wish.
The gray skinned oncologist spoke like the wizard of Oz, “You got cancer. You can do chemo or you can not. It might buy you a couple of weeks. But most people just go out and travel. Give us the call if you decide to do the chemo.”
(You are probably asking yourself the same thing we did: WTF? Is this for real? Did that really happen?) Yep. And just like that we left shocked, stunned and with our hearts so heavy, the weight lowered our heads.
The following day we had our second opinion. It was in a much bigger room with, get this, just the doctor. He confirmed, stage four cancer but what he said next made all the difference:
“I could give you statistics but that’s all they are. You are your own person. I am not God. It’s not up to me. Every person is different.” This doctor gave us just what we needed, a little bit of hope.
We have always approached our lives on a mission to live life to the fullest. So when Patrick was diagnosed, we didn’t have those thoughts of, “Oh we should have done this or that because we have always done the things we wanted to do. We aren’t scrambling to take a trip or talking about things we ever got to do.
Silver Lining #1: It’s a great feeling to know that even though faced with this situation, we have lived our lives.