The Compassion of Caregivers

Empathy, presence, witness

Besides memoirs written by those who have cancer, there are books written by those who take care of those with cancer — the spouses, families, and friends. This is not surprising because cancer is hard on them, too. While caregivers may be more objective about the medical procedures, their accounts can also be heart-rending because they include the anguish of being unable to stop the pain their loved one is going through. Bearing witness to the suffering of others takes its own courage.

Gleason 6 Prostate Cancer

 Howard Wolinsky

It starts with the PSA blood test. If it rises above 4, you might have prostate cancer. The next diagnostic step is a digital rectal exam. Then you move on to an MRI and probably a biopsy, where they take a dozen samples from around the prostate. Pathology looks at the tissue samples and delivers a Gleason verdict.

The Strength of Cancer Women

 

Audre Lorde, breast and liver cancer

In her introduction to The Cancer Journals (1980), Audre Lorde, who had just gone through a mastectomy for breast cancer, sets out what she is going to talk about in her book: “the travesty of prosthesis, the pain of amputation, the function of cancer in a profit economy, my confrontation with mortality, the strength of women loving, and the power and rewards of self-conscious living.” 

Rabbit Gets Cancer

 

John Updike, lung cancer

First, a confession. Even though I was an English major years ago, I haven’t read much fiction after the shock of my first wife’s unexpected death in her forties twenty years ago, and this includes the works of John Updike. Only the directness of nonfiction and poetry have been able to penetrate the shell of reality.

I don’t know much about Updike’s cancer. Updike didn’t, either. He knew he had cancer for only one month before he died. I found half a dozen poems in his last poetry book, Endpoint and Other Poems (2009), published after his death. That’s a small amount of material to form any conclusions. The other poems in this collection were written over a number of years.

Am I My BMI?

 

The BMI gets under my skin.

I have a love/hate relationship with the BMI. Is “hate” too strong a word? There is no love. At every meeting with my oncologist, the notice flashes on the screen – “You’re still overweight, Bozo!” 

So I do seriously dislike the BMI because I’m never in the good zone. I diet, exercise, skimp, and have said “no” to dessert so often that I feel guilty whenever I actually eat one.

Has Cancer Made You Shallow?

 

Miriam Engelberg, breast cancer, graphic memoir

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics, 2006, by Miriam Engelberg.

Suzanne Shea cued me in to this gem of a cancer memoir. It recounts the cancer journey of Miriam from symptoms to diagnosis of breast cancer to chemo to metastatic recurrence. What makes this memoir different is that the journey is told in cartoons. It’s a graphic memoir that brings humor into the presentation, and humor with cancer helps us keep our emotions from hardening.

Be a Bird Feeder

Inspiration

Inspiration is a bird feeder. Every day we have to fill it up for it to be helpful.

Having cancer is a drag much of the time. We’re tired from the treatments, tired from trying to guess what is going to happen next, and we may not feel great, so we stay home in our sweltering, sweaty pot of woes so that we don’t bother anyone with our troubles.

We can all use a spark of something to liven up our day. It helps to get outside of the house for a time to remind us that the world still exists and to give us something to look forward to, even if we just walk around the block.

Healing Begins With Listening

 What can we learn from this book? If you’re seeing a primary doctor for the first time, and they don’t let you tell your story about what’s wrong, find a new doctor. The patient-doctor connection needs to be a relationship, not a transaction.

In her preface, Dr. Rita Charon lays out what her book, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (2006), is about: “narrative medicine [is] defined as medicine practiced with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness.” She goes on to say that it provides “health care professionals with practical wisdom in comprehending what patients endure in illness and what they themselves undergo in the care of the sick.”

When Do We Become Cancer Survivors?

 

Survivor, surviving, or treading water. Which am I? Am I a cancer survivor or still a cancer patient? They are completely different orientations with different mindsets. The treatments and therapies designed to kill my cancer are over, but it’s Schrödinger’s Box — we don’t know if all of my cancer is dead or alive until we look inside my “box.” My doctors won’t look until my PSA does something wonky. It’s a calculated unknown. Dormant cancer cells can be nudged awake by matters like metabolic changes, and what was “dead” is now “alive.” 

Some people think of themselves as survivors every day they’re alive. This is a prudent way to live. If we are never going to know for sure that all of our cancer is gone, why not focus on living as well as we can, instead of twisting ourselves into worry pretzels over everything that might go wrong?

The Stories of Patients

 medical narratives

The 25 essays in Bodies of Truth are by people who live with a chronic illness or disability. It was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019. Because most of the writers are patients, it’s a good companion to Where It Hurts, a collection of essays written by doctors, nurses, and other health care workers that was published by Intima Journal in 2026.