There is an anger and a frustration that is hard to put into words.
The optimist in me of course is thrilled that such treatments are available so that my sister-in-law might beat back the beast and live a longer life.
But that optimism is balanced by a frustration that battling cancer seems to be the story of one sledgehammer after another and another... for all the millions of dollars we're spending on cancer research, the weapons and treatment we have still seem so crude.
Yes, I know intellectually that the treatments have come so far from what they used to be. I know that such research takes time and trials and more time and more trials before the benefits can be widely seen.
But emotionally I want the scanner device out of some sci-fi show that can just scan down the body, find the cancer cells and destroy them.
We're not there yet. Maybe we'll never get there.
And so we fight the battle with the weapons we have, crude as they are.
And my sister-in-law sits there with an IV drip slowly bringing incredibly toxic chemicals into her body...
Meanwhile, another friend around my age from Burlington, VT, fights a liver cancer that is not responding to treatment... and at this point may give him less than a year to live...
Meanwhile, my wife learned through Facebook that a sister of a friend is apparently entering into her final days of life after an aggressive form of breast cancer...
Meanwhile, someone else we know just finished up her four months of chemo in dealing with breast cancer...
Meanwhile... ... meanwhile... ...
Yes, all we can do is keep going on... putting one foot in front of the other and living out each day...
But still, there are days when all you want to do is rage against the scourge that is ravishing so many wonderful people out there.
Cancer - the scourge that keeps on taking.
An audio version of this post is available as an episode in my "The Dan York Report" podcast:
