In April my daughter will be getting married.
My dad won't be coming to her wedding.
He is recovering from prostate cancer and isn't up to it.
Her wedding day will be 20 years to the day that my mother died of pancreatic cancer.
That’s the same cancer that Patrick Swazye has been diagnosed with and given five weeks to live.
20 years ago, in March, my mom went into the hospital to have her gall bladder removed.
I sat in the waiting area with my dad and one of my sisters.
After 20 minutes, the doctor came out.
Gee, I thought, 20 minutes? Something’s wrong. And it was.
The doctor said my mother had pancreatic cancer.
He said it had spread to all surrounding organs and there was nothing that could be done.
She would have six weeks to live.
Until that operation, my mom really didn’t complain of any pain, except for gall bladder-like pain.
She was only 63 years old.
She had just gotten over a hip replacement and finally was just beginning retirement.
The only other symptom she had was she had recently started acting differently.
Just not herself.
The doctors said chemotherapy would be of no benefit for my mom.
He told me that straight out.
My mom did not want to die.
She put herself through that awful chemo to try to live, instead of living her final days in peace.
Four weeks later, as a side effect of the chemo, she had a stroke.
I watched my mom slowly suffocate – turn blue – from the tips of her toes to her chest, as a result of the stroke, while in her hospital room.
I never really got to say goodbye.
And I will never do that again…watch a loved one die in a hospital room.
My brother died the week after 9-11 at the age of 53, of esophageal cancer.
I found out he had it one week before....
Again, I did not get to say goodbye.
I don’t like funerals.
Life, and death are hard.
This is about cancer.
We constantly see the "pink ribbons" representing breast cancer.
Until an actor or other famous person, or someone close to you dies, we never really pay much attention to the other diseases out there.
There are too many different colored ribbons.
Why not just one ribbon?
How about a white ribbon for all of the cancer out there?
Why is any one cancer more important than another?
Ask that of a person dying of cancer.
