• 5/7/2006
  • Baton Rouge, LA
  • Lauri Smith Anderson
  • theadvocate.com

Like a demanding houseguest who brought too much luggage and overstayed his welcome, cancer is gladly bid farewell by those patients fortunate enough to hear the word “remission.”

Finally able to call themselves survivors, they eagerly anticipate returning to a normal life. Joy and celebration follow months of recuperation from surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation.

The cancer is gone, eradicated, sent packing his bags of doom and destruction.

But, is it really? Has the door really been bolted?

Doubt and fear, held at bay, begin to creep in as the patient thinks about the other “R” word, “recurrence.” There is always a possibility cancer will come back and that it will be even worse the second-time around.

Cancer inevitably leaves permanent marks on everyone it touches. Some are physical — a body scarred and weakened by the long struggle. Others are mental. When a patient comes to grips with his or her own mortality, life is never the same.

Five years and three months after he was declared in remission from pancreatic cancer, John Wrenn saw his cancer return. “I was considered cured,” he said, though he admitted to having doubts. “I always figured that once you got cancer you had a ‘friend for life’ and that one form or another would appear again.” (After five years of being cancer free, most patients are considered cured.)

Even before the second diagnosis, Wrenn said he was fairly certain his cancer had returned. “I was fatalistic about it.” The recommendation to undergo chemotherapy again was a no brainer, he said. “No treatment, you die. Treatment, you die but not so soon.

“With the new drugs, this could even become a chronic illness rather than a fatal one. But who knows? I think the prognosis is an educated guess. I think it depends as much on attitude, luck and genes, as hard medical evidence.”

More than a year out from finishing treatment for throat cancer, Mike Dunne has had two “false positive” scares after undergoing PET scans.

“I don’t think you can go through the experience of cancer and not worry that it is all gone or it won’t come back. I don’t really dwell on it…but I do get nervous about it when testing comes up,” he said.

The first false positive confirmed “my hidden (and usually suppressed) belief that treatment would work for everyone but me. I am hoping, as years go by, I’ll be more confident that it is not going to come back. I try to feed the faith and starve the fear, which, while small, can yell pretty loudly sometimes.”

My father, who has beaten two different cancers, said he first faced his own mortality during World War II. “There were times that I was terribly afraid and I prayed to God to give me the strength, courage and faith that I needed to get through those bad times and be able to do what was required of me.”

After being declared in remission from esophageal cancer several years ago, Dad said he subsequently hated to shave for fear of finding pathological lymph nodes in his neck. He also dreaded going back for routine blood tests and scans.

“Over time, I’ve come to accept it better with the same attitude that I developed in the war. There’s probably not a day that passes that I don’t think about cancer, but I think it’s unrealistic and unhealthy not to face that.”

Personally, I have yet to hear the word “remission” in my own battle against cancer. But, I have thought about what life beyond might be like, and I am heartened by the courage shown by my friends and family.

I doubt whether my life will ever be the same as it was B.C. (before cancer), but I count my blessings for every precious day I live. I pray for the morning I can awaken, smile and know that cancer has moved out of my life.