New Hope

It is February and there is a positive energy in the air. It is the prospect of a new year. A chance to let go of the past and believe in good things to come. It is the anticipation that life will turn out how we want. It is hope. We all have hope for different reasons but at the end of the day when things don’t turn out, we dig down and assure ourselves, “There is always hope.”

Being a cancer patient in January brings a new perspective to New Year’s hope. The anticipation of the year ahead is very different to the patient and their families then to those outside the cancer world. My perspective of hope came as the caregiver for two husbands with cancer. Both of them were very sick in January and they both died in February, five years apart. I remember listening to people hope that this would be the year they lost ten pounds and finally kept it off. My husband was very thin and had no appetite. I wanted to say to them “lose the damn weight and get back to your cancer free life!”  Little by little I couldn’t relate to people in my old world before cancer, I found it very isolating. I longed to talk to other caregivers who understood my perspective.

Hope is a beautiful thing. It is a free and unlimited resource, which can be completely unfounded. I never knew the endurance of hope until I cared for my husbands. On tough days as their caregiver I privately lost sight in the beauty of hope. I didn’t know if too much hope was only denial of the disease and its progression; or if you couldn’t have enough hope, because the more positive energy the better. I wanted something concrete to keep my faith. I needed a good scan or blood test result. I remember our oncologists, families and friends constantly promoting hope to my husbands. However, when things did not go as anticipated I was the only one there in the middle of the night picking up their emotional pieces. On those occasions they relied on me to restore their hope and although I was drained I realized it was a big part of being a spouse. On the days when my hopes were down I would witness their strong will and this in return restored mine.

Hope is a relative thing. When my first husband was diagnosed with leukemia we hoped the chemotherapy would kill the cancer. When it didn’t we hoped a bone marrow donor match would be found. When it wasn’t we hoped for a stem cell harvest, not enough healthy cells left for that. Then he had cardiac death and we hoped a defibrillator implanted in his heart would stop the next one from killing him. When he got an extreme intestinal infection we hoped the antibiotics would stop it. When they didn’t we hoped he wouldn’t linger.

Hope is a powerful thing. When my second husband was told by his doctors there were no more treatments for his colon cancer which had spread to his lungs and vertebrae he sought alternative treatments. While sick he traveled to Germany, California and yes Tijuana for juice, hoping for a miracle. When this didn’t work and the cancer started growing into his spinal cord we hoped the huge dosages of pain medication would keep him comfortable, but not stop his respiratory system. The drugs did stop it and the paramedics put him on life support. When I took him off life support I hoped it was the right thing to do.

Hope is a necessary thing and that is one of the biggest lessons I learned from caregiving cancer patients. When I lost sight of it because of exhaustion and frustration it only made everything harder to endure and my fears more in control. One of the challenging parts of caring for a loved one with cancer is the constant unknowns each day whether it is medical, emotional, financial or family. There is no proof that my hope ever leads to my desired outcome in any circumstance. I realized my hope was about being able to handle the outcome. It was the act of hope that fueled my perseverance during those trying days. Like burning faith but that is a whole other topic of discussion for another day.

~ Susan Parker

Susan was a guest on this week's episode of Cancer Connect. Listen/Download/Subscribe Here!