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Putting
It Into Perspective
People who
know me have heard me lamenting over my new additions of
incisions added to my "abdominal scar collection." I am five
feet three inches tall and now have scars crisscrossing my torso
that, in total, exceed the length of my height!
But something happened yesterday to help me put my complaints
into perspective. I sat in a doctor's waiting room and picked up
a copy of TIME magazine. As I thumbed through it, the photos and
story of a young bridegroom and father caught my eye.
The young man was a victim of the war in Bosnia and described
how he was shot in the face, fled from the men who tortured him,
and escaped into the woods. He survived as a refugee by drinking
from streams with his eyes closed so that he would not be scared
of his own mangled reflection.
When it was finally safe to return to his village, his neighbors
fled from him in terror, not recognizing his gruesome face until
he produced an old photo from his tattered wallet.
He has been undergoing a series of operations to rebuild his
face, to construct the nose that was blown off, rebuild the
cheekbones that had disappeared, and reposition the eye socket
that was destroyed. The photos, even after plastic surgery were
too harsh for me to look at. His wounds were so horrific, I
didn't realize that the "After" pictures were really an
improvement from the "Before" pictures, until after I read the
captions.
A newlywed when he was first shot, he has survived the war, the
torture, and the series of surgeries and has now fathered a baby
with his young wife. He is re-building a life when no plastic
surgeon will ever really be able to re-build his face, which,
unlike my torso, will be exposed for all the world to see for
the rest of his life.
This is the second time during my cancer journey that the war in
Bosnia has helped me put my own situation into perspective and
realize how fortunate I truly am. The last time this happened
was when I was whining about having to spend so much time in my
bathroom coping with my unreliable intestines that have been
overwhelmed by the pressure of tumor masses surrounding and
distorting them.
I was awakened out of my self pity when I watched CNN (in
between sprints to the bathroom!) and saw miles of refugees
fleeing their homes. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands,
eventually swelling to more than a million men, women and
children, young and old, educated and illiterate, professionals
and blue collars.
Statistically speaking, many of them must have been cancer
patients, perhaps newly diagnosed, or undergoing chemotherapy,
or recuperating from surgeries like me. Regardless, the war was
on and they were forced to leave their beds, their homes, their
nurses and hospital rooms to flee on foot, hide in the woods,
and, if they were "fortunate", to reach a tented refugee camp.
Here I was, complaining in the comfort of my own peach colored
bathroom, with coordinated towels, hot and cold running water,
and an unlimited supply of soft bathroom tissue, while half a
world away, refugee cancer patients were digging their own
latrines.
Cancer teaches us many lessons. One of them is to put things in
perspective and to be grateful for the little things, like tee
shirts that cover up abdominal scars that no one has to see
anyway!
June 1,
2000
An Excerpt from "Where the Red Tailed Hawk Flies"
Copyright 2000 by Gabriella Graham |
