The saying has almost became cliché, but that’s doesn’t mean it’s not the truth: everyone knows someone who’s life has been touched by cancer.
We hear a lot about how families in our area are affected by cancer every June during the annual Relay For Life event in Neosho and McDonald County, and in October as the nation recognizes Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
But, for the victims and their friends and families, cancer is more than something that is in the world spotlight two or three times a year.
It is something they live with for the rest of the lives.
Personally, cancer has touched my life in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time.
She is scheduled for surgery Thursday. While walking in the parking lot after my daughters’ open house at Carver Elementary School, “Mama” called to let me know that the cancer had not spread and that her heart was healthy enough to have the surgery. She was upbeat, and said, “you all will have to deal with me for years to come.”
“Mama” is my father’s mother, and is the fiery one of my two grandmothers. She is younger than most grandmothers of thirty-somethings like myself. In fact, she is the same age as my wife’s parents, and 20 years younger than my grandmother on my mother’s side who has adjusted nicely to life in a nursing home after having several health complications of her own last summer.
As a child, I liked spending the night at “Mama’s” house because she let me do things, “your parents might not let you do.” She played video games, the old Intellivision games of the early 1980s, and loved to watch scary movies on a new cable channel called HBO.
She was the ying to my other grandmother’s yang, who has never played a video game in her life and has never watched a movie that didn’t fall under the category of “romantic comedy,” or star one of the members of the old Rat Pack.
“Mama” wasn’t the only person in my circle affected by cancer this month.
Also earlier this month, another person who holds near grandma status in my life was diagnosed with brain cancer. Unfortunately, her prognosis was not as positive, as doctors have given her three months to a year to live. This special lady will always hold a place in my heart, as she watched Quinette as an infant until her first birthday after Elizabeth went back to work and I worked at another newspaper at the time.
