Elephants and Tea - December 2019 - 43

NEW OUTLOOK

Dear Cancer,
Shortly before you and I became closely acquainted, I was sixty years old,
bouncing back from congestive heart failure, and at a crossroads in my life.
I knew I could not continue working for the rest of my life and I wondered
what I was going to do after I retired in five, or six more years. I had been
working for over 40 years and the last half of my career was in very high
stress areas. I wanted to relax in my retirement and spend time with my
wife, family, and friends.
I have a wonderful wife and I was looking forward to spending time
with her. We are empty nesters. We have five grown children who are
scattered all around the US; therefore some travel was certainly in
our future. That was OK, but it didn't take long before I realized that,
outside of work, I really didn't have any friends. All my friends were
work related. My wife suggested that we needed to expand our social
network and find some friends that were not work related. We tried
a few things, and we became regulars at a very nice neighborhood
wine bistro. We learned a lot about wines and met lots and lots of
new people, many of those we met are very close friends today. As
good as that idea was, it still did not hold a candle to what you have
done for our social life since we became acquainted.
Although you had some encounters with a few of my friends, I really did not know that much about you, particularly your interaction
with children. You're so busy, you probably don't remember, but we
became acquainted in 2005 through my daughter, Beth Anne who
lives in San Diego and was pregnant with my second granddaughter. She called me one night to tell me that my grandson Conor had
something called stage IV neuroblastoma. I remember it well, I was
sitting at the kitchen table and I've never seen her so upset in my entire life! At the time, Conor was about 16 months old and his mother
was a researcher at the Salk Institute and his father was a cancer researcher at Scripps. For nearly 15 years, she had investigated you and
your work. I had to believe her when she told me Conor had a good
chance of dying and you were the one responsible. I have to admit
it was very difficult to believe or comprehend at first.
Back then when I was trying to find information on my computer,
it was not as easy as it is today. Every night when I came home from

Oh, by the way, Conor is fifteen now and
you should see how that boy can
surf, skateboard, mountain
bike, and play guitar,
all while making
excellent
grades in
school.

Dear Cancer...

work, I would search the Internet and look up neuroblastoma to try to
find out as much information as possible. I also was hoping to stumble
across something that would provide a little hope. It took me a week
of sorting through tons of terrible stats and news and then one night,
I found an article about a little boy who was 8 years old and he was
still alive after 5 years of treatments. A diagnosis of neuroblastoma
is a dark place and I needed that sliver of hope so, so badly.
When my grandson was diagnosed, he was immediately hospitalized and ended up staying for months. The tumor was wrapped
around his aorta and it was literally suffocating him. He had to have
high doses of chemotherapy to quickly reduce the size of the tumor
so it could be removed. We live in Virginia and had to watch everything unfold at a distance. Beth Anne and her husband had to split
their time between work, home and hospital. Conor, because of his
age, required someone to be with him at all times. I had to watch my
daughter, her husband, and Conor's ten year-old sister cope with
their new and very challenging life dealing with everything you could
throw at them. You made me feel so helpless.
I was deeply concerned about Conor surviving, while watching my
pregnant daughter, and her family deal with the all the stress and
sudden major changes you made to their lives. After Conor's surgery
to remove his reduced tumor, I saw the stress first hand when Beth
Anne's sister and I went to help by taking overnight shifts watching
Conor in the hospital for a few weeks. We did 12 hour shifts overnight to make sure he was OK and did not pull his tubes or wires
out during the night.
One night at about 3 AM in the PICU where the quiet time is punctuated mostly by various beeps and sounds from the equipment near
the beds, I came to the realization of the brutal finality of a child's
death. I will never forget that night when, from down the hall, I heard
a horrible sound of uncontrollable crying and sobbing. I actually felt
the pain and sorrow coming from the parents of a child who had just
died of cancer. Watching Conor's struggle against you, and what I
heard that night are embedded in my memory forever.
You probably haven't noticed yet, but hopefully you will. Because of
you and knowing how much you have affected my family and others
you have touched, I retired. I found a purpose! I found ways to make
my retirement years productive.
I spend my time visiting Capitol Hill and using social media to help
obtain support for increasing research to find effective, non-toxic
therapies to improve the outcomes of the children you will attempt
to meet in the future. I work in conjunction with thousands of my
friends in the childhood, AYA cancer community to help make you
a national priority. Have you checked out some of the great stuff
coming out of Washington lately? We're not where we want to be by
a long shot, but we are making real progress.
There is one thing that would thrill me completely and that would
be seeing you become listed next to polio as a disease that has been
eradicated. I so want to be around to wish you a warm, "Goodbye."
Oh, by the way, Conor is fifteen now and you
should see how that boy can surf, skateboard,
mountain bike, and play guitar, all while making
excellent grades in school.
Worst to you,
JOE BABER

ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
DECEMBER 2019

http://www.elephantsandtea.com

Elephants and Tea - December 2019

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