This blog is targeted at the people who take care of their beloved ones. The ones who get the lousy news that their spouse, kid, parent, or close friend has cancer.
I remember how it started with Israel, my husband. An irritating cough that would not stop for about two months. I am not sure how it works with other couples, but after 26 years of marriage, my husband would not listen to me and wouldn’t go to the doctor—unless there was no choice.
And honestly, why rush to the doctor? A healthy man, non-smoker, eats better than most people I know (including me), avoids junk food and sweets, blood tests are great, does sports, what could go wrong when you’re 56 years old?
Apparently, many things, such as lung cancer stage 4. Yes, the one that already developed metastases.
So, after revealing that it is not pneumonia, and hearing for the first time the term NSCLS—non-small-cell lung carcinoma—(can’t they just call them big cells? I guess non-small looks more impressive in the medical literature), we both realized that we are going towards the unknown. A black hole.
Thanks, Wiki, for assisting in the definition: “A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it”.
Apparently, my husband’s cancer was like that. He couldn’t escape it. Yet it is important to note that not all cases are a black hole. People live with cancer for years, heal from cancer—but true, also die.
This journey took one year and ten months, during which I became my husband’s caregiver. It was not only about going to the doctors, PET-CT scans, MRIs, checks, medical facilities, pharmacies, phycologists, chemotherapy, and so on. It was also inquiring and learning about the specific type he had, reading medical articles, reading about the latest clinical trials, searching for new technologies among relevant startups, writing applications for compassionate use, talking to people, digging into social networks, and mostly working—24 hours a day, working for cancer. The cancer doesn’t pay, by the way, but the work does.
Working, searching for news, and finding some answers brings hope and makes us active, valuable, helpful. It’s a much better alternative than sitting and waiting for death to arrive. And, hey, it could also come in the form of a car accident, sudden heart attack, and so on. I don’t want to plant ideas in the Devil’s mind in case he reads this.
The bottom line is that we need to fill in that time with doing, enjoying life, appreciating moments, cherishing what we have, and making the most out of it.
This blog and podcast is about sharing the “what can be done when you find out your dear one has cancer”, and hopefully will give some points of optimism and smile during that complex journey with its unknown end.
Special thanks to Hezi Tenenboim for building this site, and David Segal for the pictures.
Ronit Shamay Schwartz
In memory of our dearest Israel Shamay R.I.P