Cowards? No. Brave? Not so much...

I found this essay by Leroy Sievers from his blog site, "My Cancer" on NPR to be very apt:

September 25, 2007

Does Cancer Make Us Cowardly?

“How many of us would love to run away from our disease? From the treatments, the side effects, the pain? ... We can't run away. So we are left with only one choice. Stand and face it. ”

I was watching an old episode of Boston Legal the other day. I won't try to summarize the plot, but a cancer patient was on the stand in a trial. In the course of his testimony, he said, "Cancer makes cowards of us all." It's one of those lines that grabs your attention. It was clearly meant to. And I kept thinking about it long after I was done with the episode.

I think it's wrong. Wrong meaning incorrect, not morally wrong. Cancer, as we all know far too well, is scary. It's more than scary, it's terrifying. It's worse than any horror movie out there. Sometimes the fear it brings can be almost paralyzing. Except that it's not. I think cancer tries to make cowards of us all. And fails.

To me, a coward is someone who runs away, who fails to act out of fear. No cancer patient is a coward, for one very simple reason. We're not allowed to be. How many of us would love to run away from our disease? From the treatments, the side effects, the pain? At some point, we have all felt that. But it's just not one of the options. We can't run away. So we are left with only one choice. Stand and face it.

We've talked before about how often people tell us how brave we are. I don't think that's right either. We are challenged by this disease, and we rise to the challenge because there really is no other choice. People are much stronger than they think. It's just that many people are never tested.

My cancer has scared me. It scares me pretty much on a daily basis. It scares me when it hides, when it grows, when it surprises me. But make me a coward? Never.

-- Leroy Sievers