I want to write, but don't seem to get much time to really get into the details of what's going on. It's been a busy week or so; in the past 10 days I have seen (and heard from) easily 90% of the people who are dearest to me in the world, friends of twenty and even thirty years' duration, loved ones near and far, related and not.
And yet, as I settle to the end of this odd vacation, I find myself mulling the news of my friend's niece, who at 14, went to the doctor last week for a soccer injury and thanks to a random question discovered she has cancer of the bone marrow and the lymphic system, with no clear origin point.
Beautiful, athletic, sparkling. Fourteen. My niece's age.
It makes me angry, in a profound and subtle way. Words seem irrelevant, in the face of that. Except perhaps in the sense Ondaatje meant in White Dwarfs and Other Worlds, writing of the deaths of stars and mutilation of mules, of snuffing out of talents and cutting out of tongues, profoundly sad and yet refusing to surrender something to the dark, something small, human, undefined. Dignity, perhaps.
So after such an obscenity, what would I want to write of, anyway.
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3 comments:
That's the most common age to get bone cancer: 12-15. It happens during puberty.
I don't know about the lymphic involvement, but if it's bone marrow only, she has a very good chance. I know tons of teenagers (and former teenagers) who are amputees from this, with zero recurrence.
I realize it's a huge bombshell, but it's not a death sentence.
Or I should say "not necessarily" becuase I don't know her diagnosis or prognosis.
It's too early to be sure, they';re still testing and I don't want to intrude. The bones and Lymph node together are very worrisome.
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