Breast Cancer Complacency: The Shock of Being a Tether Ball

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

“And how’s your wife doing?”

“What? Fine. Why?” (My response after a momentary stupid look.)

“Well, with her breast cancer and everything. How’s she doing?”

Source: A recent conversation with someone I don’t talk

with much anymore because I moved my position.

As I shared above, my wife’s breast cancer odyssey has become something less than a moment-by-moment struggle. But then, I’m only speaking for myself. While she is my “beautiful woman. My life partner, my one coquette, the answer to my love's duet,” (Prince Edward, “Enchanted” (2007)), I can ONLY imagine what she feels on a daily basis. Because she doesn’t have regular chemo anymore; doesn’t have tubes in the thoracic cavity anymore; isn’t bald anymore; we don’t go to weekly doctor checkups...I sometimes forget that her body was abused by cells whose division mechanism was completely overridden by something we don’t understand completely yet.

I forget.

My bad, but I do because breast cancer didn’t invade ME.

I am an observer and it’s easy for me to forget that the war is not over. There are tens of thousands of others who found out yesterday…today…or will find out tomorrow that they have some stage of breast cancer.

I’m out acting like I was the center of the world and everything else revolves around me, when all of a sudden, I find out that I’m a TETHERBALL in a professional tournament (BTW – there’s no such thing as Olympic or professional tetherball, there IS a World Tetherball Association (http://worldtetherballassociation.com/).

I do, in fact spin around in my everyday life, oblivious to the fact that my wife suffered – and perhaps suffers still – from a monstrous disease fully as horrible as anything that has attacked Humanity since the dawn of time. I don’t think about it.

Then someone asks me how she’s doing and BAM!, it’s like the opposing team hits the tetherball. I’m traveling in the other direction, blithely ignoring the challenges and pain and fear that seemed to overwhelm me just a few months ago.

How can I BE that obtuse? How can I remain evermindful? How can I be so uncaring? How can I continue to support my wife in the lifestyle that, up until two years ago, only contained the words “breast cancer” in an abstract, tongue-clicking sort of way? I even write this blog once a week and I FORGET!

That translates into the tough question for me – how can OTHERS remain aware of breast cancer when I forget all the time?

What can I do to help others remain mindful that every three minutes, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer?

First of all, I need to be continually aware that breast cancer is STILL an issue for my wife, as well as for every woman alive on Earth today. Breast cancer is not an AMERICAN issue. It’s not a black issue or an Hispanic issue or an Kenyan issue or a British issue – it is a Human issue and it is a disease that could potentially strike HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE!

Now what? I get to work:

1) I remain mindful

2) I remind others

3) I keep blogging

4) I offer a hand and shoulder to any man reading this who feels like he’s a tetherball in the deadly game of breast cancer.

All right. List written. Now for the rest of the plan!

Image: http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Olympic-Tetherball.jpg