Hope 

I’ve struggled with the notion of hope. Not knowing how much to hope. Should I be cautious about hoping? I don’t want to jinx things. One day, in tears on the phone, I said to Kathy, my sister, who has been through more than her fair share of tragic and scary things, including cancer,  “I don’t know if getting better or being cancer free is too much to hope for?” She said without hesitation that of course I should hope for the best outcome. Ever since then I’ve tried to do that; hope for no cancer, hope for the best.

I’ve mentioned my two new friends in Seattle who also have stomach cancer. We email somewhat regularly and have met for coffee twice. They are very supportive and of course understanding. We all go to different cancer facilities and we are all in different places in our treatment. But we all have to have hope…

The other day Charlene mentioned hope in her email, I think about the notion of hope frequently and I emailed to both of them a passage I’d just read and marked in a novel the night before.

I’m done with the book now, Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walters. I loved the story and the writing. It was one of those books I didn’t want to finish. It was not a book full of insight and messages, really more of an enjoyable story, but toward the end of the book there was a gem I could not just pass by, I had to reread it a few times, mark the page and then I write it down. “...true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope."   As I said to Gaby and Charlene, if our quest for health is measured in hope, then we are on an epic journey! And as often as I’ve wondered if winning this battle is too much to hope for, I have to fight that feeling and hope for it all.

Last night Mike and I watched the episode of last Sunday’s 60 minutes about “curing” a specific type of a horrible, fatal brain cancer with the polio vaccine. The first two people in the trial are alive and their tumors have shrunk completely, they are cancer free! There are other people who look like they are on this same path. It is in clinical trial and as the doctors changed the dosage there were patients who did not have the same results, patients who died from the cancer. But these first two are cancer free at this point and without this treatment they really most likely would not be alive. That was really too much to hope for, and yet…

So, hope, pray, wish, meditate, dedicate, will it to be so, visualize…do it all! That is how I am filling my time this year.

And now, with this round of cold very nearly gone I shall go downstairs to work out. It is part of the treatment plan I have to do if I want my hopes and wishes to come true!

With love and hope,

Janet