Disease Model

One of my best friends thinks her cancer is back. She would know.  She's technically a "Cancer Survivor", she made it to the five year mark.  It was five years of a hell filled with chemo and recurrences and twice a day radiation marathons.  I used to voice useless platitudes to patients with the same diagnosis as my friend's while at the same time I was speaking out the side of my mouth in my all-knowing callous nurse voice to my cohorts in the health profession.

I would say, "It always comes back." And they would nod in that smug way nurses have.

I don't want it to be true. I want her to keep believing, to keep fighting.

She won't talk about it. I think she's finished fighting.

I hate this fucking disease.

I used to roll my eyes when someone called alcoholism a disease.  "It's an addiction," I argued, again all knowing.

A friend of mine quit drinking several years ago, he had to if he wanted to get on the liver transplant list.  So he quit and he got the transplant and he stayed quit through organ rejections, and multiple complications and several near death experiences.  And very few good days.  The last time I saw him he was riding one of those motorized scooters, he had no teeth, and his belly was swollen to about a nine month pregnancy size. I didn't recognize him.

When he quit drinking everybody said he would start drinking again.  I told them I didn't believe he would.

I talked to one of the friends from my home town last night, she said she had seen him at the VFW and he was drinking.

My first thought is, "Who could blame him."

I hate this fucking disease.