Michael DiBari, the photojournalist who was my family’s shadow throughout our close encounter with the brain tumor, has posted an audio-visual slideshow of the project http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~md285806/lisa/
Considering that he took more than 3,000 pictures, I was impressed he managed to condense his work into a two-minute presentation. He said the story made one person, who had lost a loved one to a brain tumor, cry.
I’ve wondered if terrible illnesses are harder on the patient’s family and friends than on themselves. Family members can only imagine what the patient is feeling. As the patient, you know exactly what hurts and how much it hurts. You are probably also the first to accept your condition and your lack of control over what the future will bring. I couldn’t prevent the tumor from being cancerous. I couldn’t keep the doctor from making a mistake. I couldn’t say where I would be in six months.
I had gotten to the point where I had accepted the possibility of death. I wanted to see my son drive for the first time, my daughter be embarrassed about shopping for bras, my husband finally refurbish a vintage trailer. But the power to deny death was not in my hands.
Such morose thoughts. But my guess is that most people fighting serious illnesses may have them.
I am reading News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In Columbia, drug lords regularly kidnapped people to be bartered for concessions from the government. Sometimes the cartels released the victims, other times they killed them. I just finished a chapter about the final moments of one woman who was murdered. During the time she was being held captive, she wavered between crazy anger, depression, stoicism and acceptance. In the end, she walked to her death with newfound strength and grace.
A Jewish teenager in Poland during World War II had similiar feelings, according to a newspaper account that cited passages from her diary. She talked about just wanting things to be over, but then mentioned her will to live. She died after being sent to a concentration camp.
I remember that Anne Frank’s diary had a huge impact on me as a child. She endured so much and had such a short life. Even then I began to understand the human capacity to be strong in the face of adversity. Attitude is everything.
Speaking of which, I had to add this picture because I find the contrast between my puffy, bruised face, blood matted hair, and the smiley balloon kind of funny. Thanks to Mike for this picture.
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