Commentary
“I’m Still Here…”
This word is overused but, so what? This time it is the only word that will do.
This is a luminous piece of writing by a woman who has lived 22 years—and nearly died more than once—from Stage 4 breast cancer.
I was taught by a medical professor whose specialty involved delivering a lot of uncertain or bad news that the worst diagnosis of all might be, “We don’t know.”
To the contrary, no one can tell Katherine Russell Rich that that’s a bad thing—that no one can explain a small group of women who live years and years after diagnosis.
She is fine with that although, of course, it would be good to know ahead of time if you were going to be in that group so that years of holding one’s breath could be avoided.
Not yet. Research on this only has started, she writes.
Please read her whole article.
Print it out and save it for the next time someone gets this tough, tough diagnosis.
“Each year on a day in January — the 15th, to be precise — I go to a Web site and post a message to hundreds of women I’ve never met, saying, essentially, “I’m still here.
“What we’re doing, in a way, is checking for lights in the darkness.
“Now there probably aren’t a lot of Web sites where the announcement that you’re around and breathing would cause anyone to take notice, let alone respond. But this is a site for people with Stage 4 breast cancer, something I’ve had for 17 years. The average life expectancy with the diagnosis is 30 months, so this is a little like saying I’m 172 years old: seemingly impossible. But it’s not. I first found I had the illness in 1988, and it was rediagnosed as Stage 4 in 1993. That’s 22 years all together, which is the reason I post each year on the anniversary of the day I learned my cancer was back: to let women know that it happens, that people do live with this for years.” (Emphasis added)
Source: New York Times, April 27, 2010
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