Death of a Cancer Comrade

Dave, my mom’s closest partner in the fight against cancer, died earlier this month at the age of 65. He had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and right after Christmas, the cancer had begun spread to his bronchial tubes.

After my mother attended the funeral in Iowa, I talked to my dad on the phone. “I heard her telling people he was her cancer-fighting buddy, and now he’s gone,” he said. “This has been a hard day for her.”

The day of his death also was a whirlwind of emotion for my mom. During my phone conversation with her that day, her oncologist called with good news about her record-low tumor markers.

This unpredictability of cancer reminds me of my high school classmates Chris and Renee, who both had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. They shared hospital stays and treatment horror stories, and when Chris died there was no one hit harder than Renee. (Thankfully, she’s alive today.)

In my research for my thesis on metastatic breast cancer, I’ve discovered an amazing lifeline of people who communicate about their disease at www.bcmets.org. My mom doesn’t use the Internet, however, and she has shunned support groups since her first bout with cancer 12 years ago. “I’d rather just get on with life,” she says. “I have my own friends.”

Among those friends are cancer patients, though, and my mom has needed a new one. Shortly after Dave died, I begged her to call up Ella, a young woman with metastatic disease whom she’d met at her Iowa City cancer clinic a few months back. Yes, I wanted to interview Ella for my thesis, but my deeper hope was for my mom to have a new comrade on the frontlines.

It worked—they’re now in touch and my mother seems really happy about it.