Injured

She died on Saturday evening. A wonderful woman; elegant, sophisticated and intriguing. She had battled her cancer; therapy after therapy, always trusting the decisions being made always trying to remain ahead, never giving up or in, never wavering. Her last therapy I recalled had injured her lungs making it hard to continue. I go back to that moment, it’s not easy to know that our therapies have consequences and sometimes the outcomes are not what we want. Damages from our treatment, whether in the short term or the long term, are now playing an important role in our choices of what we treat our patients with. Why bring this up now?

As most of you have realized I have not been blogging for a long period of time. There are many reasons, which I will not divulge, but I will share one. Over time I have been sharing intimate stories with you. Each blog is truly a touching experience for me and hard sometimes to materialize into words. Yet I found myself doing that time and time again. I had not realized that sharing these stories was cathartic to some and injurious to others. Each blog represents a humans experience and journey with me. Such is surgery and chemotherapy, they are painful, often helpful, and not always curative. I found myself revisiting scars and wounds that made up the utter fabric of my existence. It was hard to put a positive spin on things, as often they have sad endings. It was hard to read them after I had written them. So I decided to pause. In this pause I have been reflecting and rethinking, “how am I supposed to write? What reason do I have to write?”

Today I received an email from a patient who had survived her disease. I am quoting it word for word….please take a moment….to read these powerful words.

“Hi Dr. Mo,

I felt the need to write and thank you. After my last visit this past summer we discussed your blog and that day after our appointment I started to read it. As I sat in waiting rooms all day for my appointments I continued to read post after post to pass the time and couldn’t get enough. I signed up to get email alerts when new posts were written and pretty soon it became what I looked forward to each week. Between all the junk mail there would be the notification that a new post was up and that meant that I had a five minute break from the world.

This past fall I have been extremely busy with my job dealing with lots of traveling and deadlines and sometimes the stress tends to pile. No matter how overwhelmed I would be feeling when I started to read one of your blog posts all the things that seemed important disappeared for that short time.

I tend to worry a lot and am a bit of a control freak I’ll admit, but when I was diagnosed with cancer things that I thought were so important no longer compared to having it. That experience gave me a new way of living and seeing life with a new perspective. No one tells you though that if you are lucky enough to win the battle with cancer that eventually that new outlook you have on life tends to fade once things eventually start to go back to normal. There are times when certain things bring me back to that way of thinking when I did have cancer, whether its a movie, a book or examining my scar that I realize some things I worry about just don’t really matter as much as I think they do. Your posts are one of those ways I am brought back to that state of mind and remind me how fragile and short life is and how the things I was worrying about before are nothing compared to other issues in life and what I went through and could have gone through.

When I had cancer I didn’t share my feelings and thoughts that often with friends and family. I just felt no one knew what I was going through and I was trying to keep everything the way it was before. I also felt like I wasn’t worthy enough to talk about it since I had it much easier than lots of other cancer patients. I’ve noticed since then emotionally healing from having cancer has been a lot harder to deal with. Every post of yours I read helped me deal with those issues and heal in some way. Things I had thought about and didn’t know how to put into words were all there. The fact that you were able to cure me physically and even somewhat emotionally is beyond amazing to me. I have no way to tell you how thankful I am other than my words.

Although I know you don’t write as often now and I know you have good reason since you are a busy man I want you to know that not only are you a great doctor who saved my life, but you are a great writer who has helped me heal. “

Thank you my hero, for teaching me that all injuries heal including the deepest wounds. Your words have touched me deeply. That despite the injury that cancer inflicts on us, there are lessons that broaden our minds and deepen our senses to the ongoing conflicts we face in life. Thank you for opening my mind to the reactions and usually not shared. I truly am touched and indebted to your kindness and your words have far more impact that you can possibly imagine.

Mo.