It's five years this month. Since I've been so-called "cancer free." I guess that makes me eligible to have my face plastered on a bill board with "Five years cancer free" as the caption. My friend Kari and I used to joke about being up there together, as she became five-years-cancer-free last year.
But another person who is five-years-cancer-free this month is my nephew, Collin. He was five years old when he was diagnosed with a Wilm's Tumor, the size of a basketball, they said. (Why is it they always compare tumors to sports balls? My liposarcoma [tumor] was the size of a football, they said.) But after months of torturous radiation and chemotherapy, he pulled through.
So, I guess we should be celebrating. After all, this is the offical medical time that doctors consider you healthy. But this week, we found out my dad (and Collin's grandpa) has cancer. Not just any cancer, but bone cancer that resulted from a kidney (with cancer) that was partially removed nearly two years ago. Guess they should have taken the whole thing. He didn't need the other one anyway.
I've been trying to make sense of all this to no avail. Why my dad? Why our family? Can we handle yet another tragedy? To borrow from one of my favorite books, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, "Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't he read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things He allowed to happen . . ." So maybe I'm being dramatic. But all the world seems unfair to me now.
And then I remembered something my mom told me while we were waiting at the hospital to see if Miranda was going to make it through the brain swelling in the aftermath of the car accident--that my dad plead with God to trade her life for his. But it didn't work. She didn't live through it.
This got me thinking. Had my dad already tried that when Collin was sick? Did he offer himself then so that Collin would pull through his grade-four cancer? Had God accepted his offer?
Yesterday, I found out that my dad had offered himself up when Collin was sick. Maybe that's why God wouldn't accept him for Miranda. Maybe he had already agreed to give Collin back his chance for my dad's life. Timing seems a little ironic to me. Exactly five years ago.
I don't know if God works this way. But I can't help wondering.
