Article: "Sometimes the Best Thing is Nothing"
When my wife had her lumpectomy the results
were not what we had hoped. The surgeon could not get all of the
tumor, which meant that she was going to have to have a mastectomy.
At her post-surgical doctor visit Chris asked
the question, “Am I going to die? Is this going to kill me? If so, how
long do I have?”
My fantasy was that he would say something like,
“Don’t be silly! Your case isn’t serious and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
He didn’t.
He got very serious and I could tell that he
felt like he was on the spot, which he was.
“The five-year survival rate for someone
in your situation is about 50 to 60 percent,” he told her. I could tell
he didn’t want to say it, and he sort of choked it out.
Chris went pale. “You mean I only have about a
50-50 chance of living for five years??” she asked him incredulously,
her jaw dropping in disbelief.
He told us that with her type of cancer and the
stage that she was in and the fact that it had spread to the lymph
system, studies show that survival rate.
(As it turns out we discovered that “5-year
survival rates” are misleading because those who have survived 5 years
or longer were treated with 5-year-old (or older) technology. During
their survival period the technology has improved, resulting in even
longer survival rates for those treated with that new technology. With
that in mind, during the second opinion we were told that her survival
chances were more like 70% - 80%.)
On the way home, Chris was sleeping in the back
of the car as she often did. We were driving along in the carpool lane
and I heard Chris start to cry. Softly at first, it was the first (and
only) time that I heard her cry about her illness. In a heart-wrenching
tone that I had never before heard come out of her, she choked out the
words, “I don’t want to die. Why is this happening to me?” and continued
to sob.
It absolutely broke my heart. I couldn’t hold
or comfort her; I couldn’t even touch her because she was in the back
seat. My eyes teared-up and I had to concentrate on driving, but I knew
that I had to say something.
Or did I?
Everything that I considered saying seemed
hollow, empty, or just plain stupid. I was dying inside, not only at
hearing her so distressed, but also at the thought that she might die.
What could I possibly say? I couldn’t tell her
not to cry; who am I to tell her not to cry or not to feel the way she
did? She needed to cry. I couldn’t tell her it would be okay, because I
didn’t know that and she knew that I didn’t know that. I always feel
that when something is wrong it is my responsibility to fix it; it’s
just a knee-jerk reaction that I have in many situations. I knew that I
couldn’t fix this, so I didn’t say anything and just listened to her
cry. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I’m convinced
it was the best thing I could have done under the circumstances.
Sometimes the best thing you can do to help is
to do nothing at all.
It seemed like she was crying for an eternity
even though it was really only a few minutes; I will never forget those
few minutes as long as I live.
© 2009, Dave Balch ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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