August 2007

Did you ever have one of those days when you just felt grumpy, but didn’t quite know why? Uneasy. Out of sorts. Per­haps a bit anx­ious. You run through your men­tal check­list of things that could be wrong in your life, some­thing you might have for­got­ten … but every­thing seems to be in order, except, of […]

In my trav­els for busi­ness this week, I encoun­tered a gen­tle­man who shared with me that his 46 year old wife is dying of can­cer. It was first diag­nosed in her breast, but has now metas­ta­sized in her brain. It has also invaded her bones.

The can­cer was extremely fast-moving and chemother­apy failed to stop its progress. Because the doc­tors were pro­vided with erro­neous lab­o­ra­tory test results, the wrong type of chemother­apy was appar­ently used. Now that the can­cer has essen­tially taken over her whole body, it is too late for the doc­tors to pre­scribe the cor­rect type of chemother­apy — which might have pro­vided a cure or at least remis­sion for a sig­nif­i­cant period of time.

I asked him how he is doing and he brushed my inquiry aside, insist­ing that he will be all right. I also ques­tioned whether he has sought out a com­pe­tent coun­selor or ther­a­pist with whom he can con­fide and explore his feel­ings. He has not done that yet, but assured me that he will. He acknowl­edged that the stress is tak­ing a toll on his phys­i­cal health and is fol­low­ing his doctor’s direc­tives because he will be left to care for their chil­dren by himself.

As the hus­band fac­ing this cat­a­stro­phe con­tin­ued speak­ing with me, I stud­ied his eyes for fur­ther clues to his feel­ings. I expected to see anger, resent­ment, bit­ter­ness. I expected his speech to be punc­tu­ated by clues to his intense emo­tional strug­gle with the real­ity that he is los­ing his wife as a result of another human being’s mistake.

My search was in vain.