the c-word.

Cancer.

Yep, it has entered the vocabulary of my family.

I mean, I always thought this day would come - statistically speaking, the chances of my family escaping all whispers of the word 'cancer' were always rare, seeing as the rates of diagnosis have increased with better/earlier detection, and really, cancer is a broad term that generally just means 'cell that are out of control.' Actually I just looked it up on the CDC, some 19.0 million people in the US have been diagnosed with cancer. That's a lot of people!

Long story short - my grandpa fell, broke his hip, said broken hip was examined, doctors found a mass in the area, second exam revealed that the mass was myeloma (which, apparently, is more common in men than women, and generally seen in older people, and composes 1% of all cancers diagnosed - thanks wikipedia), then my grandpa got his hip replaced and the surgeons got 90% of the cancer removed in the process. All this in the past week or so, culminating with the surgery today. I don't know yet what next steps will be taken or what to think about the cancerous 10% remaining in my grandpas body.

And even though I know all these facts, it's still a scary thing. And I've been forced to compartmentalize it all - I have, have, have to get my giant to-do list done: papers for class, homework for class, spacesuit to sew, qualifying exam report to finish writing, qualifying exam presentation to prep, research to complete for said qualifying exam, etc, etc, etc.

But sometimes I just can't compartmentalize it well enough and so tears of fear, tears of sympathy, tears of reality fall while I'm trying to justify nanoparticle synthesis in a report for NASA while sitting in a coffeeshop. And the reality of it all keeps me up at night and crosses my mind as I attempt to use tabular surface energy data to estimate contact angles.

Without fail, situations like these remind of me of my own mortality and so I was doubly thankful when I casually flipped through a book on the dining room table this morning, left by one of my roommates, and opened to this passage:

“A whole lifetime is short,

and sometimes very short indeed.

How do we know that ours may not be so short

as to end an hour, 

or even a minute after

we have determined to give ourselves wholly to God?

It is quite possible,

for we cannot depend on anything

that passes away,

much less on life,

on which we must not reckon

for even a single day.

We may be among those who,

worldly as we still are,

have some deep desire

to do what is right. 

At time, rare as they may be,

we commend ourselves to God’s care.

We think about our souls every now and then.

Busy as we are,

we pray a few times a month,

even though our minds are filled

with a thousand other matters.

“Where your treasure is, there also is your heart.”

We need, therefore, from time to time

to cast aside our daily concerns.

We need to reflect upon the state of our soul,

and to realize

that we will never reach our goal 

by the road we are following.

We need to withdraw from time to time 

from all unnecessary cares and business.”

(Teresa of Avila, via Let Nothing Disturb You)

I desperately want to play golf again with my grandpa and see him fully healed, but my prayer tonight is for the peace of Christ above all else - peace for my grandparents, peace for my family, peace for me, as we all begin to tread on this new road.