Day 107

When Bill was first diagnosed with lung cancer is was a bit of a shock. He didn't, after all, have any symptoms. Yet, there it was, a large ghostly image on the film. A few weeks ago he started coughing. It progressed into the kind of racking cough that acts on the body like a small-scale earthquake. The coughing frightened me. Underneath the fear was a sense of helplessness. My habit is to respond to helplessness with anger. I would find myself getting angry with Bill when he would cough. Then I would feel guilty: What kind of horrible person gets angry at a person for coughing, especially a person with lung cancer? It was a painful cycle: coughing, fear, helplessness, anger, guilt. This little drama played itself out in my head several times a day. I had to consciously work to accept the coughing. I had to stop seeing it as the enemy in order to disarm my defense system. I am learning to accept the coughing and the cancer that it speaks for. The fear and helpless and anger are slowly being replaced by compassion. Increasingly I find myself empathizing with Bill rather than being angry with him. Maybe I'm not such a horrible person after all; I am only human.