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01/09/2007: "Mind Games"
As I was matter-of-factly working the Play-Doh out of Alex’s hair this morning, I was thinking about the similarities between books by cancer survivors and books by parents with Autistic children. Just like with my cancer diagnosis, when Alex was first diagnosed as autistic, we bought and read just about any book we could find. There are several written by parents who used 70 hrs a week of training or chelation or vitamins or voodoo on their children to get results. To me, these books all had one thing in common. They added guilt to the myriad of other emotions already on my plate. My child, like 90+% of the other autistic kids out there, has never broken free of her prison. I am one of the thousands of parents that don’t get to write a book about their kid.
As I read stories of cancer survivors such as Lance Armstrong’s book and others’, I can’t help but draw a comparison to my feelings from years ago. If you have cancer, only the survivors get to write books of success. There are so many times that I doubt my ability to beat this. My great friend, Kurt, reminds me regularly that God tells us if we say we are cured, then it shall be. And my training from college athletics proves that my mind can control and assist my body. But with every new pain or escalation of an old one, a fear creeps over me. Cancer this far along is a pretty tough foe.
These feelings of impending doom seem to be cyclical. There are plenty of times when I convince myself that I feel good and can beat it. Other times, I just have to sit with the doubt and get trough it. As are my other colleagues at the Contra Costa County Office of Education, I am in mourning for the sudden loss of our friend Ginger Hom. As natural as life is, it is just so hard to make sense of death.