Are You Happy Now?

A young woman walked into the waiting area and spoke with the women behind the covid plexiglass barriers, something about wondering where other members of her family were. She walked slowly past me to a seat like mine at the end of the row and sat down. After a few minutes another woman, a sister I think, came into the room and the two women made eye contact. As she went to sit with her she asked, "Do you feel like you've been put through the ringer?"

I was sitting in an institutional padded waiting room seat next to an institutional end table, oddly shaped with 2 levels, and bare except for a box of tissues. It's a place to put my coffee while I read my book and wait to hear my name called.

Juli waiting with me at the Cancer Center

I was reading a book by Rod Dreher called "Live Not By Lies." It's a book I'm finding hard to put down as Rod interviews many people who suffered under Soviet totalitarianism. The title comes from a quote by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago. The accounts of human suffering inflicted on anyone who disagreed with the Communist Party ranged from the inability to find work, to death by torture.

Live Not By Lies - Rod Dreher

After a few minutes the sister popped up, went to the reception counter and asked for a bag. At this point I glanced to my right and witnessed the young woman frantically trying to hold back retches, a cloth of some kind held tightly against her face as she rocked forward and back. The sister rushed past me with a bag and handed it to her. The poor soul quickly filled the bag and then tried to catch her breath. My eyes were full of tears as I prayed for her. I couldn't think of any other way to help.

The chapter I was reading in the waiting room was on suffering, and right as the woman began to be in distress I had literally just read: "Suffering is part of every human's life... First you have to live through it, and then you have to pass on the value of suffering, because suffering has value."

"Suffering has value." This is not a statement you'll find used by people with a "your best life now" mentality, and the idea of suffering having great value is foreign to every marketing plan in our materialist society. A famous quote by CS Lewis reveals the value of suffering: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains." Embraced by those who love Him, each and every cancer patient could attest to this truth. 

I have said more than once that I would prefer not to be healed of cancer if it required that I give up what I have gained from the suffering. And what is it I have gained? A very clear picture into my self-centered mind.

One of the conclusions reached in the book regarding suffering is that it is best shared in community. People who were suffering did much better when they had other people to suffer with. This is something I have experienced myself many times. When I lost all my hair from chemo and would see someone else who was bald or wearing a head covering,  eye contact and a smile was all that was needed to gain encouragement to continue. We need each other.

The biggest mistake we make in this materialistic milieu is thinking happiness is the goal rather than contentment. We see it all the time don't we? "Whatever makes you happy" is the social media standard advice when someone is considering divorce or deciding whether or not to ditch a friend who seems to be pulling us down. Probably, the real source of my discomfort is the way my reaction points out my weaknesses. In Orthodox Christianity we call those weaknesses "the passions," and passions are really just sin requiring annihilation. Suffering is the clearest voice I've heard in helping me identify my passions.

After this woman recovered, she got up, took a deep breath and walked out of the waiting room with her sister. Shortly after that a young man walked into the room looking like the pictures you see of people suffering from anorexia, big knobby knees, skin wrapped tightly around every bone, skinny shoulders and every joint prominent. He was completely bald, so obviously was undergoing treatment. He was here in this waiting area for the same reasons I was, and everyone else, to prepare for scans. It was hard to imagine those skinny legs holding up that skinny body.

This is scan day for me. I visit UC Davis twice a month, the first day just a quick trip to the lab for blood draws, the next day a visit with the doctor to evaluate the labs and pick up another 30 day supply of drugs. But every 90 days, that quick trip for labs is followed by a full day of waiting rooms and machinery. I arrived at the Cancer Center lab today at 9AM to provide 6 vials of blood, then drove over to the hospital and went through covid security and check-in, then waited to be called back for the installation of a port and injection of radioactive dye, then a walk down the hall to wait for a CT scan with contrast dye and the removal of the port after the scan, and finally a short wait back in the first waiting area prior to an hour long session with a bone scanner, finishing up at about 4:30PM.

It's been a difficult month for Juli and I. The last blood draw a month ago indicated that my PSA had gone from "undetectable" to 0.1. This has happened several times before, and then it has returned to "undetectable," but every time it happens, there is a tendency to fear that the treatment protocol is beginning to fail. If it fails, then we're back on a timeline toward my demise unless another protocol can be found to slow the cancer. And every time a protocol is exhausted, there are fewer to try. We also discovered a serious tumor on Sophie's (our 10 year old Golden Retriever) knee, and scheduled surgery to remove it. She has a serious heart defect, and the prognosis for surviving the anesthetic for the surgery was not really in her favor.

Sophie's wound.
The tumor was cancer, although a low grade that she may survive for another two years or so.

In some ways, the suffering we have experienced lately is weighing on us, especially because I have been managing symptoms and side effects well enough to forget about them for much of the time, but the detectable PSA and the real potential loss of our Sophie reawakened the potential for fear.

When I go to UC Davis I share in the suffering of others. It is a wonderful reset of my self-centered tendencies. There were motorized hospital beds going back and forth all the time near the waiting room I was in. I was still struggling with tears after the sick young woman walked out and the malnourished  young man walked in. I was also observing the motorized hospital beds rolling by in the hallway, most occupied by full-grown adults in various stages of wakefulness. Two beds rolling by especially caught my attention and reminded me again that my sufferings are pretty minimal when compared to the sufferings of others. The first was an adult-sized bed with a little toddler in it. He was a sweet brown-skinned little boy with huge eyes, taking in the ceilings, walls, and doors as he rode sitting up in the center of the bed, his hands touching his feet with his knees splayed out. Then another bed rolled by, this one a miniature bed, with a little infant in it, crying all the way past the doorway. I pray for all of them, including the parents suffering the anguish of not being able to take the place of their kids, to be able to suffer in their place.

Some time later, radioactive dye injected, CT contrast dye port hurting my arm, I walked the long hallway to the CT scanner waiting room to wait early in hopes they could take me in earlier than scheduled. Before long, the skinny young man walked into the room with a nurse and began discussing his scheduled scans at the counter, seeing if the schedule could be adjusted so he didn't have to return tomorrow. When I first saw him I thought he might be early 20's as he was over 6 feet tall. But I changed my age estimate to maybe 15 as his mother arrived, using a walker, and began to scold him for causing stress to hospital staff for asking them to adjust the schedule.

A walker. And the mother of a teenager with life-threatening cancer. I pray for her also.

It's now Thursday, two days after scan day. In an hour Juli and I will head back down to UC Davis to meet with the doctor and get the results of the scans and blood tests. Will it be good news or bad? It's the same before every appointment. But what does it mean to trust God? Do we succumb to the temptation to believe God somehow owes us a good report because He should want us to be "happy?" Does God owe me a "best life? Correction: Does God owe me "my best life NOW!?!"

I don't like to suffer, but it is helpful to remember the words from Holy Scripture "For the joy set before Him He endured the cross." And the words, "He who endures until the end shall be saved." and "Those who suffer for my sake shall inherit the kingdom." Well, that kingdom is present, and suffering grants us to participate in that kingdom and cooperate in the work of the King.

Happiness is fleeting and temporary, but contentment in suffering has eternal value. I'm still terrible at this. Pray to God for me.

Well, we have the results. My PSA is back to "undetectable." We are thankful. I feel bone pain these days a little more, and the CT scan showed something that needs attention - hopefully minor, but all in all a good day. And Sophie's surgery went well and she is recovering nicely. We may get another year or two with her instead of a week or two. God has been merciful, and I am content.