Bundle of Energy

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As I was walking into radiation five years ago for my intake, Katherine passed me going the other direction.

The radiation department at Cheshire Hospital has its own outside entrance and parking lot. If you’re walking down the radiation hallway, you are not going to meet stray people. You’re going to meet people who are there for the same reason you are.

“Katherine!” I exclaimed “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I have bladder cancer,” she said. “What about you?”

“I’m here because I had a lumpectomy two months ago,” I said. “I’m getting my tattoo marks for radiation today.”

“I don’t think I’m going to do radiation,” she said. Continue reading “Bundle of Energy”

It Sounds Like a Death Sentence

CANCER:: A death sentence or a wake up call? You Decide by [Nithya, Durgananda]

Mary’s family responded to her diagnosis of cancer “like they had received a death sentence.”

Actually, we’ve all already received our private death sentences. It’s called birth. What’s the cause of death? Birth. But most of us have failed to notice this cause-and-effect, so when we are startled into this recognition, it can be shocking. Wait a minute! I’m not ready for this!

We think of birth as a joyous event. Profound joy overcomes the new parents and may extend to the grandparents. It’s an altered state for which there are no words. Words seem extraneous to the direct experience of the birth of a baby.

Yet everyone who is born will die. Later, or sooner. Death is guaranteed. The time of death is uncertain, however, so we can proceed as if death doesn’t exist. Or it’s so far over the horizon that we can ignore it.

A cancer diagnosis can sound like a death sentence. But it can also be a wake-up call–waking us up to our one wild and precious life.