Denial is not a river in Egypt

I think it's been said before - maybe to the point where it's trite - that the health care industry is not an industry that handles death well. It's about healing, curing, and managing, but when death looms on the horizon, even those compassionate hospice workers can get a little weird. Give you an example - I recently asked for my Lorazepam to be renewed. It's an anti-anxiety drug I take every so often, and I take it when the anxiety of treatment overwhelms. I wake up at 3 a.m. and can't get back to sleep; I don't always have time to meditate and pray and exercise my way out of my mid-night trouble. (At one point I think I'd gone more than two weeks on almost no sleep - that's when I finally asked the doctor for help!) As my therapist said, it's a very normal response to a frightening situation - of COURSE I'm anxious...I should be terrified.

The new oncology nurse wasn't crazy about the prescription (Lorazepam is addictive) and wasn't sure it could be renewed. I just shook my head - for Christ's sake, I wanted to say to her, the least of my problems these days is addiction! Rehab seems very doable after ten rounds of adriamycin!!!! Throw me into group, I'll share my feelings!!! (I'm laughing)

Seriously, there is no roadmap for how to live with death. Whether death is imminent or simply and abstract concept - or something in between, as I'd describe those of us on the cancer odyssey - getting from here (life) to there (death) is a highly individual thing, as individual as any life journey, healthy or no. Should sick folk go around long-faced and troubled, or should they choose to embrace the good that comes and let the rest fall away? As a parish minister, I always followed my parishoner's lead; if they wanted to live and fight (even if the obvious end was close) or lay down and die, that was their perogative. They are the royalty in their own death.

At my first dx, when everyone around me was alarmed and anxious, I would say, "I ain't dying until I'm dying." And I meant it. It's not a denial - I had my bad moments - but a decision to live into the day, taking what comes and relishing life while I can.