Chapter 5: Lightening



 Lightening by Ramona Handel

"Lightening won't strike in the same place twice.  Janet won't have cancer.  If I think positive, it won't happen."

These were the thoughts repeating through my mind like a mantra as Janet and I waited for her biopsy results.

WRONG!  Cancer can strike twice or more in the same person and positive thinking isn't enough to change the diagnosis.

Janet's Air Force doctor advised a radical mastectomy.  I knew a modified radical mastectomy was just as effective and less disfiguring with fewer medical problems later.  I also believe the military medical system was behind the private medical system in the "latest treatments" available.

Get another consult, outside the military.

The diagnosis was the same, the surgery was modified, and performed by one of the best surgeons available in the community.  It was well known in the private medical community that he had no personal support to offer a patient but instead had great surgeon's hands.

As I visited Janet in the hospital during her recovery from surgery, a tape recorder playing chanting in the background, little did I know I would walk a similar path in the near future.

January 1981 I saw the same doctor for a lump on my breast.  He examined me, my mammogram was negative, so was the diagnosis.  I skipped out of his office into the sunshine of that crisp Dakota day with feelings of joy and gratitude.  I did not follow my own advice and get a second opinion, after all the news was good and what I wanted to hear.  Why would I ask for a different diagnosis?  I was making a mistake.

My focus was elsewhere.  I had been divorced for a year now and still adjusting to such a huge shift in our family.  I was beginning a life long process of coming out as a lesbian and staying sober.  My immune system was weakened from high stress and in retrospect I was a candidate for cancer or any stress related illness.

Eleven months later a needle biopsy of the lump showed cancer.  I had a mastectomy and my recovery was enhanced by the love and support of friends and family.  Two months before I surgery I had met and fallen in love while on a trip to Mexico.  That was a strong healing factor through my surgery, recovery, and life.  Love has a way of making life instantly more previous, as does cancer.

After the surgery and three months of chemotherapy the cancer has stayed in remission.  Not because I have made great efforts to avoid carcinogenic substances.  I eat anything and quit smoking many times each year.  In that sense I am a terrible gambler and most definitely addicted.

Cancer has been a challenge and I have been more challenged by accepting my homosexuality, accepting my parents' nonacceptance of my sexual orientation, and the resulting periods of depression and despair.  I believe I have learned to cope in better ways and the despair is in the past.

My family has come to a form of silent acceptance in sixteen years and although they do not talk about my orientation I occasionally say something about a gay or lesbian friend and there is obvious discomfort and a change in subject.  We have stopped fighting over the issue that should be a non-issue in a healthier system.

My sons are of another generation.  My younger son has come out about his lesbian mother to his friends and has talked about how difficult that is.  My older son talks freely with me about his homophobia and that he can't tell anyone about "it."

I think it is not my faith that has carried me thus far but rather the caring of friends, lovers, and family.

What I am grateful for was best said by Yeats.  "Think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was, I had such friends."