It’s been two weeks since my wife said “I have cancer” to my daughter.
It’s been a week since we described our workup thus far on my blog.
Reaction to our blog post was diverse, ranging from the HISTalk blog to the Boston Globe.
It’s a time of anxiety and unanswered questions. The diagnosis and staging phase has been described as one of the two major tension points in cancer. The other is the time after remission, when the worry about recurrence is a constant burden. One of our doctors recommended we keep a “family bottle” of anti-anxiety medication ready for those times when the stress exceeds our capacity to cope. Cancer is truly a family disease and the emotional impact extends from the patient to family caregivers.
Many friends and colleagues have offered prayers and support. A few have lamented that care coordinated by a physician-husband at a Harvard-associated hospital in Boston lacks equity since every wife/mother/daughter may not receive the same care throughout the US. Kathy and I agree. We posted these comments in response to those who speculated that Kathy’s care consumes an asymmetric amount of healthcare resources.
