Columns
The Amazon Trail
| The Amazon Trail An Epidemic of Love |  |
by Lee Lynch
I just received an e-mail telling me that yet another woman I know has cancer. In the past several months the toll from cancer in my social circle has risen beyond already unacceptable levels – breast, colon, uterine, lung, cervical. I suspect this is not a phenomenon I am experiencing alone. Surely it is an epidemic that deserves as much attention as any ten hot warring countries.
Helpless is a weak description for what I feel, yet I have learned that I can do something, I can be a friend. We’re all so essentially alone when dealing with diseases of body and mind, but I see this scourge uniting us in ways little else could. When I heard that my ex’s partner was ill, I spontaneously ended a years-long silence with a note of support. Cancer is the great equalizer. Differences and past angers pale next to the instinct for clan-wide survival.
So we send energy and green healing light, visualize a healthy, thriving friend, embark on a course of meditations or prayer and donate whatever we can in the way of money or time – weaving all of this into a fabric we use to wrap our friends in love. Around here, we’re getting good at this.
Over time a sort of crones’ resource kit with healing rituals for radiation and chemotherapy and special diets rich with strengthening nutrients will evolve. Even now organizations are coordinating services like “hospital visits, rides to appointments, home visits, housekeeping, gardening, pet care, laundry, meal preparation and help with confusing medical bills or insurance problems,” as the Mautner Project suggests.
Is the raging current of cancer a product of aging? All of the diagnoses I’m hearing about have come to women in their 50s and older. Maybe this is normal and only new to me because these are my contemporaries. Is it a sign that we are taking better care of ourselves and going to the doctor so the cancers are being caught earlier? This would be good news in terms of survival. Is it a sign that the medical establishment has responded to feminist pressure and is paying attention to something besides prostates and male hearts? Have the medical schools accepted and trained more women physicians than they used to and are these women now listening to women patients as we have never been listened to before?
Probably these are all factors in what feels like an awfully high incidence of cancer around me. But what I fear is that this is no statistical fluke reflecting better, earlier reporting. I fear that as our planet gets more polluted, as our foods become more processed, as corporations change the very chemistry of what we ingest and breathe, that we are the guinea pigs of a radical future designed for profit, not people. I fear our bodies are failing to adapt to an atmosphere in which space explorers would refuse to land without heavy-duty protective gear. I hope I’m wrong.
Whether there is an increase in cancer (and I no longer trust our government to report this) or I have simply reached an age when illness becomes more common, I have a challenge before me. The lives of my friends are seriously disrupted and they need help. What I see evolving is lesbian family like I have never seen before. And not just lesbians – neighbors, people at work, estranged in-laws, childhood buddies from across the country – everyone wants to help. It’s like a blizzard, when the whole block comes out with shovels and hot chocolate and good cheer. I hear a collective belief that positive thought and huge amounts of love can heal, or at least prolong life. Even when it’s time for someone to go, the caring remains to carry the survivors through grief.
More than one friend has told me that although it’s no fun, having cancer taught her a lot. It’s teaching me too. Of course its prevalence in my life leads me to worry, “What will I do if –” I start thinking about how home is where, if you have to go there, they have to take you in, and get depressed about going backwards toward my relatives who have enough on their hands without the return of the never-popular family queer. But I don’t see that happening. I see families I never knew were there being created and expanded. I see all kinds of help, from the national Mautner Project for lesbians to local groups to pharmaceutical giants that make drugs available at little or no cost..
I sure hope no one else in my life ever gets cancer, but now I know that when the cure is found, it won’t be the only miracle inspired by this disease.
Founded in 1990, the Mautner Project is the only national organization dedicated to lesbians with cancer, their partners and caregivers. For more info: The Mautner Project, 1707 L Street NW, Suite 230, Washington, DC 20036, Voice/TTY 202-332-5536; fax 202-332-0662. E-Mail mautner@mautnerproject.org.
Lee Lynch is the author of eleven books including The Swashbuckler and the Morton River Valley Trilogy. She lives on the Oregon Coast, and comes from a New England family.
© Lee Lynch 2003