RGB - A Role Model of Hope

 

Every cancer is different. But as a cancer survivor, I know the thing we all have in common is to never give up hope no matter what. Never go down the dark path of doom. Never make a diagnosis until you have all the puzzle pieces, until you have talked to all the doctors on your team that know cancer -- know it intimately, know it across googles of cancer clients. Get all the pieces, make a plan, keep hope. 

For this path of hope, having cancer sisters and cancer brothers along the path helps so much. It does what the doctor treatments do not -- it feeds the soul, it speaks to our humanity, it provides a place of privilege versus a place of oppression. From my cancer sister Sue Beam, I learned from her that there never is a dumb question, a limit of questions, a limit of sources to examine or types of sources to examine. I was lucky to have her as my advocate who attended my oncology consults -- her MD training as a neurologist never made me feel insignificant in any of my questions, comments, fears, or places of hope. She was a source of humanity.

I look to her and to all my cancer sister and brothers for sources of this humanity. For this post, I want to focus on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, my cancer sister and a woman of courage and hope.

* Ruth Bader Ginsburg got colon cancer in 1999 (deadly - high morbidity rate).

* RGB then got pancreatic cancer in 2009 (again, along the deadliest cancers)

* RGB had lung cancer and broken ribs in 2018; treatment led to cancer free diagnosis

* RGB in September 2020 had pancreatic cancer return. She died of these complications of pancreatic cancer, just shyly missing the new Supreme Court appointment.

She was 87 and worked full time that whole time -- and with that first ten years of cancer, taking care of her husband with his cancer metastasis. He got cancer in 1956 and his returned -- he died 2010, 54 years later after his cancer. I'm 54 -- he lived my amount of years alive. Again, everyone's cancer trail is different, but what remains the same whether we get an extra day, year, decade or more -- always keep ones eyes on hope.