Keeping Hope Alive When Surgeons Are Cutting Your Body Up

beingwell

5 min readDec 12, 2020

The stories are too many, but the patients soldier on, hoping they’ll be the lucky ones.

Dr. Patricia Farrell

Nov 5 · 4 min read

Photo by Paul Felberbauer

With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, ‘Studs, you’re an optimist.’ I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what’s the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven. — Studs Terkel

The voice on the phone was uncharacteristic without the lilt, the sudden laugh, the optimism usually expressed. Who among us would be cheerful or express anything but a somber sense of helplessness when the “C” word is used in our diagnosis?

Cancer may not be the number one killer of people anymore (it’s #2), but it still strikes fear into the hearts of anyone who has it. We require repeated reassurance that our cancer is benign, curable, and won’t be life-threatening. But in our hearts, we wonder if we’re being told the truth.

Clinical trials, some are told, may give back a future, sustain lives, and allow dreaming of another tomorrow. But the researchers leading the trials are as blind as we and make those statements either in good faith or to advance their careers. We want to believe it’s good faith, and, in that spirit, we agree to put our bodies through whatever it takes to defeat the monster.

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Another Clinical Trial

I’ve been through this before; once with my mother, then one sister and now this woman. The trials all proved to be futile and my hope is that, although lives weren’t saved, something useful was learned and medicine advanced.

The woman’s voice this time reminded me of the poem by Robert Frost that reads:

The woods are lovely dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

She has already gone “miles” with three breast surgeries for breast cancer and reconstruction, brain surgery (she has glioblastoma) and now a possible surgery for pancreatic cancer. “They told me it’s a big operation and I’d need six months to recuperate,” she said. Will she have six months to live? I didn’t ask.

The monster, despite all the efforts to contain it, had spread and tossed its seeds to other organs in her body.

All the while, she maintained her optimism, except for now. The darkness of these woods was foretelling something to which she had become resigned; the long sleep.

The clinical trial didn’t work and the wrenching side effects of the medications may have been for naught. What to do? She still maintained her optimism that her doctors could “give me four more years” as they had said might be the case.

Now her optimism isn’t as great, but she has said, “I’m ready for death. I’ve made my peace with it and I’m ready. I don’t want to take the study medication anymore; it makes me too sick.”

Keeping Hope Alive When Surgeons Are Cutting Your Body Up

The stories are too many, but the patients soldier on, hoping they’ll be the lucky ones.

Another Clinical Trial

Written by beingwell