Deep in our hearts, we all harbor the same ugly little fear, rarely spoken aloud: “Maybe cancer really is contagious. Don’t get too close, please, because I sure don’t want it.”
But you can’t hide when cancer comes to your home, to your sweetheart, to your reality. And what you learn is that when someone you love has cancer, you really do “have” it, too. The fear is what’s contagious, and that’s the hardest thing not to spread.
Even before Larry moved to Arkansas last November, he’d been plagued by pain in his mouth. His doctors diagnosed it as thrush - a bane to diabetics - and told him not to worry about it. But as spring turned into summer, it just kept getting worse. He saw more doctors, who called it a canker sore, thrush, even shingles. Nobody ever considered the ugly “C” word.
Shockingly, that’s what itwas. He was diagnosed on the same day I started this job as Features editor - a promotion I accepted only because I knew I had the support at home to make it manageable. Huh. A little over two weeks later, he was in a 10-hour surgery at Washington Regional Medical Center.
Cancer of the tongue is rare, according to the statistics. The American Cancer Society estimates only 12,060 new cases out of the 1.5 million new cancer diagnoses in 2011.
The survival rate? About 80 percent, by the ACS figures.
It sounded simple to me.
You lose a chunk of tongue, right? You keep the rest, maybe you sound a little funny, but life goes on.
Without getting tied up in medical details I don’t really understand, I can tell you the surgery is anything but easy - and so far, the recovery hasn’t been a piece of cake, either.
The operation takes 10 hours because the doctor is dealing with microscopic blood vessels and nerves and because taking out all the lymph nodes on one side of the neck would apparently leave a gaping crater without reconstruction - which opens up another whole can of worms. Larry now has a pectoral muscle flipped up and stuck into his neck to fill in where things were removed and a row of about 30 stitches where the muscle used to be.
It also meant a tracheotomy so he could breathe during the surgery and afterward, plus a short time on a ventilator (short enough I didn’t have to see it, thank God).
I have been extraordinarily blessed that my family- both mine by birth and the Martins that I acquired through marriage - are hardy souls. My mother was in the hospital when Kennedy was president and not again until Clinton was in the White House.
We lost my father-in-law, my beloved “Pa,” on Sept.
29 of last year to a raging melanoma that he just couldn’t beat. But I have never had to hang out in hospitals.
I learned a lot in the 11 days we were there - including things I never wanted to know.
I learned that 10 hours is an absolute eternity, longer in some ways than the nine months it took to adopt the Little Queen. And that no matter how many times you check the “arrival and departure” board - which shows progress through surgery and recovery - it doesn’t make the time pass any faster.
I learned that Larry and I have amazing, generous, compassionate friends - strike that; they are ourfamily - who visited him, prayed for him, sent him cards and found ways to help when he didn’t even know what he needed. Just as important, they also stayed with me, held my hand, made sure I ate, kept the balls in the air at work and let me cry when the enormity of it all finally hit me.
I learned that the nursing staff at Washington Regional goes beyond the call of duty every day. They took great care of Larry, answered my questions, taught me how to care for him, showed me tricks that might help at home and hugged me when I needed a hug.
It’s undeniably more than I bargained for when I got the random email 18 months ago: “Hey, are you the Becca Bacon I knew in Iola?”
Well, yes, I was - and Larry was the X-ray technician I worked with at the little local hospital in southeastern Kansas while I was in college. We were friends, I thought, butapparently he’d harbored a wish for more. And, more than two decades later, we were both single. We started cyber-dating in the fall. By November, he was in Arkansas. By Christmas, we were engaged.
By now, we thought we’d be married. That’s on hold for a little while. But the love affair is going strong, thank you. He’s got 107 staples - plus that many more stitches you can’t see - and we’ve got a long road ahead of us that includes radiation.
Am I still scared? Yes.
And no.
In spite of all the power our culture has given the word “cancer,” it’s neither a death sentence nor a life sentence of suffering. It can be defeated. People do it every day.
So today ... and tomorrow ... and the next day? Those are our days.
BECCA BACON MARTIN IS AN AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST AND FEATURES EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.
Our Town, Pages 24 on 10/02/2011