Tomorrow my dad starts his first round of chemo therapy.  This isn’t chemo designed to eliminate the cancer but to manage it, to keep it in check in order to wring a few more years out of life.  When I was growing up, cancer was like the Cold War, a low lying but  ever present threat, but it too has changed from what it meant twenty years ago.  Cancer used to be a battle that was either won or lost within a few years while friends and family rallied around and put as much of their lives on hold as possible to help or worry long distance, knowing that the outcome would be known all too soon. Viewing it as a chronic disease is the  new paradigm and it changes almost everything.

What hasn’t changed is that cancer is still a disease that impacts the whole family and even while I’m a player in this particular story, I find it fascinating to see how the family dynamic plays out, shifting and reforming depending on what’s going on and who’s feeling stressed.  Some of us pre-process fear and grief while others hold it at bay, some insist on ‘doing’ something just to exert a little control, while others become more passive with advice.  After a few years money gets more of a voice in the decision making than it ought to and yet, how can it not?

Family members seem to need the others to see things their way, what ‘should’ be done or not done and even the patient isn’t excused – shouldn’t he/she be more scared?  Do they not understand what this means? The thing is, nobody knows for sure what it means. Just as there is now more time and more hope, there is an equal increase in uncertainty. It’s not feasible for people to drop everything for an unknown number of years and yet there are still doctor visits and hospital stays, more tests, more waiting for test results, good days and bad days. Family and neighbors do continue to help but there are also other needs and emergencies happening in the meantime as life goes on. The cancer patient is no longer the ongoing center of attention in the family drama. Now it’s a rotating role and sometimes that baton shifts gracefully and sometimes it doesn’t. We are all getting lessons in living well with ambiguity.

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