I recently found out that a good friend has a horrible kind of cancer. Not that there are any "good" cancers out there, but there are operable cancers, treatable cancers, manageable cancers. This cancer is ferocious, horrible, mostly inoperable. The five year survival rate is 30%.
It's a freak case. People who get this cancer have an average age of nearly 70, and my friend isn't even 30. The doctors have all said they have never seen or heard of a case like this.
My friend is going with the most ambitious route to get rid of the cancer, a surgery that is the best recommendation from doctors consulted all around the country. The dangerous part is that the procedure has a 20-40% mortality rate. Holy crap.
First I cried, and then I was generally shell shocked. I felt small and my own problems felt smaller (as cliche as that is... it's totally true). Then I felt at a loss. What could I do? All I want to do is help, but how? What can I possibly do? Sure, "be a good friend", "be supportive". Do you know how ridiculously meager that feels in the face of what my friend is facing? How much it feels that can hardly express the care and concern I feel?
1 comment:
Hey Val. I'm sorry to hear about the friend's cancer.
Along with the surgery, she might want to research her type of cancer and Vegan diets. There seem to be certain types of cancer that shrink when meat products are removed from a person's diet. Rudy T (former Houston Rockets coach) had it work for him.
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