Radiation and Resilience: Laughing Through the Hardest Days

It’s a bad day when a doctor says you have cancer. It’s a worse day when he says it’s stage prostate cancer with a metastatic lesion.

I suspect we all known people who have fought valiantly, only to have cancer consume them. I’ve seen bright, healthy people with hopes and dreams turn waste away. After my diagnosis, in the darkness of night, I’d wake up and imagine joining those I had prayed for and later mourned.

Hormone Therapy

Two oncologists conferred on what was best for me. They agreed radiation and hormone therapy gave me the best chance of living longer (injections that starve prostate cancer cells of testosterone needed by them to grow and spread. The shots don’t kill the cancer entirely, but if a few cells remain after radiation, it keeps them at bay).

Hormone therapy comes with side effects. In my case, I experienced hot flashes, loss of balance, anxiety, brain fog, diarrhea, and exhaustion. A patient receives the shots over several years. In my case, every four months. A patient receives the shot in the stomach like a hot branding iron.

Radiation

Ah, radiation. I received forty doses for my prostate and five for my lesion. Radiation destroys tissue. It causes burns inside a person and one’s plumbing is never the same again. The actual procedure requires a patient to have a full bladder and empty bowels.

Before radiation treatment begins, the technicians strap the patient to a bench for optical measurements. It takes five to ten minutes to assure that all doses of the radiation find the planned locations. Once the machine starts, the patient hears a hum, then arms mercilessly crisscross over the patient, causing the patient’s full bladder to swell.

One day I asked the technicians as they unstrapped me, had they been to the River Nile. Heads shook. I declared they could go see it if they followed me to the restroom.

The Patients I Met

On the first day of treatment, I met the normal patients undergoing radiation. The first person I met was “the why me patient.”

This is someone who believes they shouldn’t have cancer. They’re angry and often take their fury out on the technicians. Even for me, a fellow patient, they were difficult. They endlessly complained. I felt for them, because our disease cares nothing about our fear, discomfort, or discouragement. Why me?

I ask, why not me?

The second patient I called “the angel of death.” They were the saddest of all. They believed cancer had doomed them. Radiation and other treatment therapy were simply the painful path to the grave. Every time I met one, I could see the look in their eyes, the pallor of their skin, and the hunch of their shoulders, as if death rode their backs. My heart cried for them. They were inconsolable.

The third patient was the oddest. I call them the “humble sad.” I felt my greatest kinship with them. Cancer humbled them. It humbled me. They were polite and sometimes encouraging. However, their eyes spoke louder than words. They were sad. It’s hard not to be.

The Clinicians

In meeting other patients, and seeing their interaction with the clinicians, I realized something important. The clinic employed special people. Regardless of patient behavior, the staff always kept our ordeals upbeat. It gave me reason to respect them.

In my many days of treatment, I realized they deserved kindness, not anger or sadness, but a smile, a laugh, a good-natured roll of the eyes. It was serendipity. What I was doing for them; I was doing for myself.

Therefore, I cracked jokes, spoke of funny current events, and discussed the mediocrity of our local sports teams. We’d laugh. It kept me going through the struggle.

Going Forward

For me, facing cancer with humor was a strategic means to fight the disease better than being angry, feeling doomed, or succumbing to sadness. Radiation is rough. Cancer is rough. I was afraid. When the radiation warning light glowed red, the reality of where I was, in my life, was real. However, even if cancer is heartless, I realized I wanted to live longer. Therefore, I chose my fight with humor.

Currently, I’m off hormone therapy to determine if my cancer still exists. While I wait, I meet new friends with cancer. We speak of the importance of humor. The thing is, nobody owes me a perfect life, free of illness. I believe the past frames the present, and choices chart the future. As it was during radiation treatment, as it is now waiting, I can be sad, angry, feel hopeless, or I can fight with a laugh. Why not?

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