A Bow in the Clouds

Suddenly -- it was over!  “normal life” was something of the past.  We were face to face with the demons CANCER and DEATH.

Cancer is a diagnosis that no one wants to hear.  It is a word with the power to conjure up a host of frightening images.  It is a word that has been part of my life since the fall of 1990.  Through surgery and chemotherapy, I was cured of ovarian cancer by June of 1991.  For reasons that remain shrouded in mystery, some people can develop two or more unrelated cancers.  Lucky me ---- I discovered a second cancer in the autumn of 1991.  My second type of cancer was very rare and aggressively malignant.  I had multiple tumors in my chest, a lemon-sized tumor on my liver and still another on my spinal cord.  I became paralyzed from my diaphragm to my toes.  No one in that condition typically survives for more than a month or so.

In addition to my health problems, Lou and I were struggling with other cares.  My mother lived with us for twenty-five years.  While I was hospitalized for my final chemotherapy treatment, my mother died in another hospital.  I was not allowed, nor was I able, to leave the hospital to attend her funeral.  A week after her death, I was released from the hospital weighing ninety-three pounds and having a white cell count of point four.  Eleven days later, Lou’s sister Queenie lost her courageous eight-year battle with cancer.  Lou’s only other sister, Jean, was diagnosed with cancer one month prior to my diagnosis.  Because of Jean’s illness, we had to face the ordeal of putting Lou’s ninety-six year old mother in a nursing home.  She died in 1993 and we lost Jean in December of 1995.  Our happy and productive life was mired in illness, pain and grief.  The sun was definitely NOT shining.

In the summer of 1997, the unbelievable once again became my harsh reality.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  This was a third kind of cancer, not a metastasis from either of my previous cancers.  In the next eight months I experienced a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstruction surgery.  I consider these months to mark the final lap to be run in my race toward health and wholeness.

Today the rainbow appears once more in my personal sky.  The waters of death have receded and the dry land of life beckons.  After months and years of steroids, radiation, physical therapy, surgery and chemotherapy, the cancer is gone.  Wheelchairs and four pronged canes are no longer a part of my life.  I am not only walking, I am thoroughly enjoying a new involvement in ballroom dancing.  In reading again the story of Noah and his rainbow, I realize that I, too, have built an ark, endured a flood and glimpsed a rainbow.  Perhaps it is a story worth the telling.