Sunday, October 29, 2006

Cancer, Cancer, Everywhere

I really think there’s an epidemic going on. Not a week goes by that I don’t learn of yet another person who’s been diagnosed with cancer. I just learned a woman I know has been diagnosed with lymphoma. She has a one-year-old daughter. Her sister died of lymphoma when she was 21 years ago. My neighbor’s father was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It’s inoperable and his prognosis is very bad. He’s only 56 years old. And four mothers at Josie’s school have had breast cancer. Considering the school only has about 50 families, this is quite a large percentage!

If people were coming down with a virus at the rate that people were getting cancer, I’m sure the World Health Organization would sound an alarm and label it a pandemic.

It seems so commonplace and unavoidable now while before I was diagnosed, it was a fairly rare disease for people over 60.

All this news of cancer lately has gotten me down. I feel like I’m surrounded by it. Corny as it sounds, it makes my heart feel a bit heavy. As I was thinking about this today, it struck me that people who live in war zones live with heavy hearts all their lives. Watching people around you get diagnosed with cancer might not be as soul-destroying as watching people around you get shot, bombed, starved, or massacred on a daily basis. I can’t imagine living with such fears day-to-day. Where does hope come from in situations like that?

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