Didier,

I feel so bad for you, too! I have certainly had many days (weeks?) when I have felt like I couldn't take another thing. I can only offer this story to hopefully help: My best friend's mom was going to have a hysterectomy three years ago and when a routine chest x-ray was done before surgery, they discovered masses of tumors in her lungs--advanced cancer from smoking thirty-something years.

At first, everyone was so devastated; docs said they couldn't do a thing to save her life, only prolong it. Boy, was that a hard one to handle. They said she might live six months if she was lucky. However, through chemo treatments she lived three years--died last month because the cancer spread to her liver. Because of her mom's recent death, my friend was still here in Va and could be with me while my husband had his cancer surgery last week. She and I had a lot to talk about while he was in surgery. She told me how hard it was to come to terms with her mom's disease, but while by her mom's bedside in early December, my friend wrote in her journal: "Thank you, Cancer, for giving me time with mom these last three years. She could have died suddenly of a heart-attack or in an automobile accident, but instead, you gave me three years to love and appreciate every moment...to go to the beach for the first time together, to ask dumb questions like, 'Why DID you marry Daddy?' and to appreciate each and every call to just say hi."

Didier, I know you are a long way from feeling like that now, but since my friend told me this last week, I am trying to figure out how I can come to terms with the cancer that is threatening to take my husband of only 1 1/2 years from me and my daughters. It is a struggle, but I want so badly to stop grieving over this cancer.

I hope you can find some way to get through this a little easier.

Christine