Educating Connie

In September, my husband and I took a class titled, "Strength-Finders". My top strength is Learner. Meaning, I love to learn things. It's the process of learning, not necessarily what I've learned, that I enjoy. One of the my other strengths is "input". I collect things: photos, postcards, information.

Here's how they've played out the past few months since my mother's diagnosis. When we first learned my mother's cancer was a certain type, the family began our collective research project finding all possible information from the internet. I tried to stay with websites that I knew I could trust for medical terminology. The more I learned, the less I wanted to know. To the untrained medical person, liver cancer is liver cancer. To the medical person, it was adenocarcinoma. Again, I didn't like what I learned -- where liver cancer (or adenocarcinoma) originates, treatment options, life expectancy. The tumor is inoperable. It wasn't very good.

After more tests showed that the liver cancer didn't originate somewhere else, now it was called cholangiocarcinoma. That's still liver cancer to you and me. It means the treatment is different - the tumor is operable. Life expectancy is longer. Instead of months, we now have the possibility of 3-5 years.

Today, my mother was scheduled for surgery. Was scheduled. It's been delayed for two days because of blood. More stuff to learn about. More stuff I don't want to know. Stuff about blood antibodies and antigens.

Sadly, I'm only interested in all this information because of my mother's cancer diagnosis. I have no desire to know more about it. Nor do I enjoy learning about it. I am, however, thankful that there are people who have a passion for medicine, who want to learn and know about various cancers, antibodies and antigens.

There were days I had to hold myself back from researching "cancer". My brain ceased to process the information. I couldn't arrange the information I had collected into something I could deal with. (I needed someone who's strength is Arranger). Honestly, I didn't want one. I wasn't going to Arrange my information into a pretty hard-bound scrapbook that I would get out on a regular basis to "re-live" the experience. I want this to be a one-time, short-term experience.

There has been some comfort in all this cancer research. Modern medicine has made great strides in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Patients are living longer. People are becoming more aware. Cancer is more prevalent in our society. More people are diagnosed with it. Family and friends of cancer patients are telling their experiences, sharing their successes. It's encouraging for me. That's what I hope this blog does for others: that it encourages them.

We live to battle another day!