When cancer returns

When I was finishing "Cancer Journey: A Caregiver's View from the Passenger Seat," we just found out that Jim's lung cancer had metastasized for the first time. In one of my preliminary drafts, I wrote that a recurrence is not as difficult as the initial diagnosis. Lynne Eib, one of my endorsers, suggested that I might want to qualify that statement, because many people find a recurrence or metastasis much harder to handle.

This weekend at a conference in Chicago, I was talking with a man whose prostate cancer had come back, eleven years after surgery and treatment. He was devastated. For five years he believed he was cured, only to learn the cancer had returned.

What a blow it must be to have cancer reappear--like a soap opera character who, after a thorough search, is given up for dead, eulogized, and laid to rest, only to show up years later, resurrected, causing havoc in Pine Valley.

In 2008, when Jim had his first recurrence, I had been looking over my shoulder for five years waiting for cancer to come back. Therefore, as I said in my book, the recurrence was not so shocking. Even in 2009, when the cancer metastasized to the bone, I was not caught completely off guard.

But, I must admit, if it rears its ugly head again, I will be crushed.

The solution? Do I protect myself by refusing to accept the miraculous remission that we are enjoying? Must I continue to look over my shoulder to keep from being blindsided if the cancer returns?

I would rather not. I have made a conscious decision to adopt the philosophy of the cockeyed optimist, claiming and believing that Jim has been healed--even if that means making myself more vulnerable if I'm wrong.

I'll let you know how it goes.