BATTLE READY

No sooner had summer school finished last Friday than I heard my first back to school ad on the radio this morning. Yikes!

Having been a summer school teacher for over twenty years, I admire most of the young people who use four weeks of their summer holidays to either repeat a course or get ahead of the game by taking a new one. Nowadays, there’s no stigma attached to attending these classes and going to an air conditioned school this July was certainly a reprieve from the heat.

One year I taught a Grade 12 class with forty seven students…there’s no cap on class size in the summer.

My friend Andrei attended a very different and much smaller class at Sunnybrook Hospital a few days ago.

All ten of the attendees were cancer patients who were learning about the chemotherapy regime they were about to embark on.

“What a great idea!” I responded over the phone to Andrei. “Wish someone had warned me about some of the side effects of chemo,” I added as I reflected on my experience at North York General.

“Yea, as well as explaining how chemo works, the nurse also advised us re diet and exercise. The class was really quite useful,” Andrei continued. “The results of my bone marrow biopsy should be in soon but right now, my oncologist says that my stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma is very treatable.”

If knowledge is power, then Andrei has armed himself with quite an arsenal gleamed from cancer veterans like me as well as from his extensive internet research on lymphoma. Unlike Mike 2.0 a year ago, it seems he can handle the truth.

Although understandably anxious about the next four months of bi-weekly treatments, he remains optimistic and determined to face his challenge head on.

As we finished our conversation, I wished him well and told him that Terry and I have added him to our cancer prayer list.

What I should have told Andrei was that everyone’s cancer journey is a bit different. How one’s body reacts to cancer drugs is unique and no amount of knowledge can prepare you for all the twists and turns in the road ahead.

Like every new cancer patient, Andrei is about to undergo a paradigm shift, a shift from indestructible to vulnerable, from independent to dependent, from carefree to careful. It’s a time of transition and hopefully a time of growth and insight, a time of patience and prayer….a time for attitude and gratitude.