After a lifetime of trying to follow Jesus, the enormity of his teachings becomes tangibly real when cancer comes into your life.
It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, and my husband, John, is asleep. He’s no slacker; he’s recovering from a procedure that required us to be up at 4 a.m. to get to a hospital by 5:30 to exchange the drain on his left kidney.
John has “serious” bladder cancer, according to his urologist. The doctor didn’t give us a “stage” number, but he didn’t really have to. From what I saw in the emergency room in January, it couldn’t be anything but the worst stage. Not just blood — one of cancer’s warning signs — but great clots of it in John’s urine, accompanied by pain from being unable the urinate on his own.
Cynthia Astle
As of this writing, three months after the crisis that put my husband of 50 years into a hospital for a week, there’s improvement to the point that John no longer needs a catheter to pee. However, because the tumor originally blocked his left kidney, the drain installed during the crisis has to stay “for a while,” said the urologist.
That news was a major disappointment after a string of physical successes. We’d hoped the cancer drug and immune booster John was given intravenously for nine weeks had knocked back the cancer to the point he could at least seem like a whole human being again. Instead, we faced the reality known to all patients and their loved ones: Cancer sucks. Cancer kills.
Facing up to one’s mortality isn’t the challenge; it’s uncertainty that strains the spirit.
Cancer doesn’t just suck life from bodies, it sucks vitality from souls. It sucks “normalcy” from daily living. Suddenly there are medical procedures to do, like flushing a catheter, never taught in “home sciences” class. Daily routine transforms into an ever-evolving list of tasks related to helping a body remove its waste products, actions taught from early childhood that one could once do without having to think too much about it. There are sanitation procedures with sterile gloves, bandages to be replaced, bed pads to be changed.
Thinking itself transforms into decision fatigue. What medical appointments must we juggle this week? How do we prepare to get through hours of blood transfusions, intravenous drug infusions and long waits in clinics and doctors’ offices? What housekeeping chores can be done and what must be put off? Did we pay the bills on time? Are there medications to be refilled?
“Being the partner without cancer hurts almost as much as being the patient.”
Being the partner without cancer hurts almost as much as being the patient. My days are filled with questions. Is my beloved in pain? (Not much now). Am I responding correctly to the symptoms I see, or am I asking too often how he feels? Is this task something he can do for his own self-worth, or should I step in? What about all the household management he did so adroitly that he’s now too brain-fogged from treatment to accomplish? If I suggest taking over something, am I making him feel worse emotionally?
As his primary caregiver, I struggle most with cancer’s uncertainty. John now has four specialists on his case: a urologist, a urology oncologist, a general oncologist and a thoracic surgeon because he also has lung cancer, and they all have different takes on his prognosis. He faces two major surgeries in the next few months. Yes, he was a smoker for longer than we’ve known one another. Smoking is a primary cause of bladder cancer, because the toxins in cigarettes have to go somewhere, and they tend to collect in the bladder as well as the lungs.
After three months of such trials, I’m reading my Bible with new clarity. Often the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings reveals itself in new ways: “Oh, now I see what Jesus meant!” I sometimes wonder if “leprosy” is a catch-all term for many diseases that rot flesh and torture souls.
And yes, God has received my anger and my anguish, sometimes blasted at the Almighty with such force I fear echoes will shatter me. Lord knows, I feel shattered in soul as well as achingly fatigued in body and mind. I begin to understand more clearly why my Muslim friends say “Inshallah,” Arabic for “If God wills.” I ask what the Divine Mystery wills for our lives now, and the answer always comes back: Love.
“Love takes on a rainbow of meanings when facing cancer.”
Love takes on a rainbow of meanings when facing cancer.
Love becomes a stranger giving helpful tips on how to make infusion visits more comfortable for patient and partner. Love becomes a hospital transport assistant going back to radiology to retrieve John’s dropped wallet. Love becomes cutting my husband’s toenails because he can’t bend over anymore with a tube coming out of his left kidney into a bag that has to be emptied every few hours.
Love becomes enduring sleepless nights. Becomes having a family cuddle with our two dogs. Love becomes welcoming home our adult son whose remote work allows him to relocate to help care for his parents.
In the infusion clinic, I’ve seen an array of people coping with myriad diseases called “cancer.” I see pain, fear, anger, frustration, resentment, longing and loneliness. I’ve felt each of their emotions, and I weep for the people who appear to have no one to walk the cancer journey with them. I look at them and I wonder whether anyone has offered them the love of Christ — not the corrupted American version that seeks power and riches, but Jesus, who became human to show humans God loves them and wants them to love one another. Even burdened as I am right now, Jesus calls me to love them as best I can.
Cancer has enlightened me in ways beyond count, and the light blinds me like Paul on the Damascus Road. We Methodists believe salvation is a lifelong process of becoming “perfected in love,” as our founder John Wesley termed sanctification. In the midst of the worst disease imaginable, we can still affirm Wesley’s last words: “Best of all, God is with us.”
Cynthia B. Astle writes about The United Methodist Church for BNG.