Hope and Grief
My heart is heavy and my eyes keep spilling over. I found out last night that one of my fellow patient ambassadors, a woman I trained with in Atlanta last June, has been taken to Jesus already. She and I had the same disease, with the same receptivity to estrogen/progesterone and negativity to HER2. We were diagnosed around the same time and were on the same treatment. And she is already gone.
Earlier this week, I had the privilege to go to an event in Washington DC hosted by the Friends of Cancer Research in honor of the 5th anniversary of the passing of the breakthrough therapies designation. I got to see the video they created from my footage and the interviews with other lawmakers, government agencies, a fellow patient, and the Friends of Cancer Research (see below). I got to hear Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and leader of the Human Genome Project, say he believes that using the word "cure" about cancer is now something within the realm of possibility. He even addressed my fellow patient and me by name to tell us that we are the reason they do the work they do.
I heard from Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, that we are living in a day where the scientific advances in medicine are astounding, that life-changing drugs for all kinds of conditions are being approved daily and, thanks to the breakthrough therapies designation, are getting out to the patients as quickly as possible.
The new commissioner for the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb was there, as well, hearing our stories and the passion every person in that room has for fighting cancer and eradicating it. I believe it is his desire as well.
I felt so encouraged to meet all these amazing people at the highest levels of our government health agencies and to find out they are passionate about bringing an end to these cancers that kill so many. I was inspired by their work and believed in the optimism that, by the time I need to try another plan of treatment, there will be another new drug ready to extend my life.
And then I found out that Kitty died. And she was actually the second woman I knew to die in the past week. Mara, a fellow Charlottesvillian with whom I have many mutual friends, as well as a mutual disease, was someone I'd emailed with several times but had never been able to meet in person. She died this week, too.
Kitty and Mara were women just like me. Literally just like me. And now they are gone. While Kitty was on a breakthrough therapy, my same breakthrough therapy, once it stopped working for her the other available options couldn't stop the progression. The exciting innovations being discovered daily in the NIH and the FDA didn't come fast enough for them. And now I'm not sure they'll be fast enough for me.
My bright hope from earlier this week has clouded over for the moment. Yes, I am doing pretty well right now. But Kitty was, too, just fifteen months ago, and now she's departed. The end can come so quickly. I had no idea. I feel an urgency now to do the things I've been procrastinating on, to weed out activities that don't have eternal significance or bring me great joy.
My clouded hope is not an absence of hope, however. Christians never grieve like those who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13). I believe there is another life to come and that I'll go there when my time here is done, however soon that may be. I believe Kitty and Mara went there, too, because they believed that they were unworthy, but rested in the faultless worthiness of Jesus Christ. I believe they are in a place where there is no more sickness, no more death, no crying or pain, where Jesus will tenderly wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev. 21:4).
So there is hope. And there is sadness. This is the life we live.
Earlier this week, I had the privilege to go to an event in Washington DC hosted by the Friends of Cancer Research in honor of the 5th anniversary of the passing of the breakthrough therapies designation. I got to see the video they created from my footage and the interviews with other lawmakers, government agencies, a fellow patient, and the Friends of Cancer Research (see below). I got to hear Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and leader of the Human Genome Project, say he believes that using the word "cure" about cancer is now something within the realm of possibility. He even addressed my fellow patient and me by name to tell us that we are the reason they do the work they do.
I heard from Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, that we are living in a day where the scientific advances in medicine are astounding, that life-changing drugs for all kinds of conditions are being approved daily and, thanks to the breakthrough therapies designation, are getting out to the patients as quickly as possible.
The new commissioner for the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb was there, as well, hearing our stories and the passion every person in that room has for fighting cancer and eradicating it. I believe it is his desire as well.
I felt so encouraged to meet all these amazing people at the highest levels of our government health agencies and to find out they are passionate about bringing an end to these cancers that kill so many. I was inspired by their work and believed in the optimism that, by the time I need to try another plan of treatment, there will be another new drug ready to extend my life.
And then I found out that Kitty died. And she was actually the second woman I knew to die in the past week. Mara, a fellow Charlottesvillian with whom I have many mutual friends, as well as a mutual disease, was someone I'd emailed with several times but had never been able to meet in person. She died this week, too.
Kitty and Mara were women just like me. Literally just like me. And now they are gone. While Kitty was on a breakthrough therapy, my same breakthrough therapy, once it stopped working for her the other available options couldn't stop the progression. The exciting innovations being discovered daily in the NIH and the FDA didn't come fast enough for them. And now I'm not sure they'll be fast enough for me.
My bright hope from earlier this week has clouded over for the moment. Yes, I am doing pretty well right now. But Kitty was, too, just fifteen months ago, and now she's departed. The end can come so quickly. I had no idea. I feel an urgency now to do the things I've been procrastinating on, to weed out activities that don't have eternal significance or bring me great joy.
My clouded hope is not an absence of hope, however. Christians never grieve like those who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13). I believe there is another life to come and that I'll go there when my time here is done, however soon that may be. I believe Kitty and Mara went there, too, because they believed that they were unworthy, but rested in the faultless worthiness of Jesus Christ. I believe they are in a place where there is no more sickness, no more death, no crying or pain, where Jesus will tenderly wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev. 21:4).
So there is hope. And there is sadness. This is the life we live.
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