Intro-11. COPING INVOLVES DARING

In our everyday life, we humans conform to many rigid practices, rules, and assumptions. It makes life simpler. But coping with cancer often involves ignoring these conventions to move on with the battle. The examples I provide here are perhaps minor and irrelevant. But seeing the styles of survival gives my brain a wake-up call. Here are some stories that explain.
Going back to my childhood around age 10, I remember having a great curiosity about my grandfather getting an artificial limb. He lost his leg from diabetes. We visited out various stores and had him measured as samples were presented. It got drilled in my head that wearing prosthesis was a must and that people who didn’t were either swimming or too inactive to need it. Yet what a surprise came to me when is saw a young lady at M. D. Anderson, missing one leg, and zooming down the hallway on just crutches. This mode of transportation just about doubled her velocity; I suddenly understood that that when you’re active, getting there fast is more important than worrying how you look. I could see myself in the “look good” attitude, while everyone was passing me up through the “get it done” mode.

Here’s a second example. While sitting in a waiting room I noticed a young man with his about-8-years-old son, a cancer patient. They talked with a middle-eastern accent which made me wonder if he had come all the way to Houston from another country. What devotion and discipline. Deep down I wanted to go talk to them but I thought this would be a violation of their privacy.
After about 20 minutes a middle-aged woman patient came up to the boy and started a conversation. It began with “How wonderful it is that you speak two languages,” and then explained how in her own life how she learned Spanish as a second language. Next she asked what kind of cancer he had. In my mind I freaked out; “How dare she ask this, it’s inappropriate,” I thought. But she kept pushing. The father answered the question and the boy began to relax. They got into a very nice conversation comparing how each of them had traveled the healing. Again I saw the practice of daring rather than waiting; that “cancer” was not a bad word, and your treatments and challenges were worth sharing. “What a different world this cancer community is,” I thought.