Sunday, May 10, 2009

Survivor

When Jim had been ill for several months, I wondered, when does he become a survivor? Was he a survivor six months into the disease? A year? Would he only become a survivor when the doctors declared him cancer free? Or only when given a clean bill of health? (Lots of luck with that one. That’s one bill a cancer patient never receives.)

I read that anyone (caregiver included) who lives through the diagnosis and the turbulent weeks that follow, can be called a cancer survivor. If suffering and stress make a survivor, I would agree. We deserve some sort of acknowledgement for living through that ordeal. But "survivor?"

Technically those who outlive a poor prognosis might be survivors, but often their survival has little to do with their own effort. To say, “I am a five-year survivor” seems like a claim of personal accomplishment when in fact some survivors could best be described as richly blessed or darned lucky. It makes no more sense to credit someone with survival than to blame someone for death. Both are random events orchestrated by a God whose methods and motives are unknowable. “On a large enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” (Chuck Palahniuk).

Just living through an ordeal and coming out on the other side still breathing isn’t such a great feat. In 1980 Jim was driving to work in a little MG convertible. He slowed to cross a double set of train tracks on a country road where the trees and brush obscured the view. A three quarter ton truck designed to travel the tracks but not heavy enough to trigger the cross arm failed to make the required stop at the crossing. The driver crashed into the side of the MG pushing it into the path of a train coming from the opposite direction on the parallel track. Jim’s car was hit first by the truck and then by the train which carried it a mile and a half before it could stop. The car was demolished but miraculously Jim lived. He was a survivor, sure enough. But his survival had little to do with anything he did.

Length of survival should be celebrated, but every death should remind us that survival is a gift. Does the five-year survivor deserve more recognition than the person who dies after a valiant six month fight? Is it even necessary to have cancer to be a cancer survivor? Any caregiver who lives through a spouse’s diagnosis fits the survivor definition. The length of time one endures, the severity of the disease, or the type of suffering don’t make a survivor. What does? Next time.

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