chapter two

CHAPTER TWO
Team Building

Cancer is a member of my family. It has taken many people from three generations, including my mother who died of breast cancer in 1984 at the age of 61. My sisters and I took care of her and kept her in her home. She died there with her cat on her bed. My brother-in-law Skip has been fighting cancer for over six years.  He’s my role model. We have spent countless hours sitting in waiting rooms and hospital rooms. I know it’s a team effort. I need a team. My family will be very supportive of course, but unfortunately they are all over 200 miles away. Actually it is me who is 200 miles away. When I retired I moved here and have been living here since 1998.

I do not have many friends. Never have. But I have good friends and that’s more important. One real friend is worth 100 casual friends. These are people you can count on when things get tough. I went to my local friends and asked them to be on my support team. They all agreed immediately. I will be depending on them a lot in the coming months. You can’t do this alone. I know this from experience. You need help. I have good help.

You also need doctors. My primary care physician is like having a friend who happens to be a doctor. I like and respect him for choosing to be a general practitioner instead of specializing and making the big bucks. He works in a small town at a family practice. He hand-picked my oncologist who wears faded jeans and hiking boots. I liked him immediately. He tells it like it is, which I appreciate. I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of him in the near future. I also met a surgeon. He showed me the CAT scan and explained to me what I was looking at. He said that surgery was not an option and gave me copies of the scan. I’ll probably not be seeing him again.

I like to be in control. I don’t think I’m a “control freak” but others may disagree. A situation like this presents challenges for someone like me because you have to rely on others a lot. I’m also a list-maker. So in order to have the illusion  of control, I made a list of all my support team and doctors with phone numbers and email addresses and sent it to everyone on my team. I need to be active and have something to do. I need to think about giving others access to my financial affairs and other personal things. I need to review my will and make any adjustments there. I need to engage other people in my life and think about options for the future.

My thoughts and feelings about life and death will be the subject of Chapter Three.