Mike, a retired Air Force veteran, is a tall, leaner man. As an Air Force colonel, hundreds entrusted him to lead the squadron. In retirement, he entered the private sector and leveraged his military leadership for a second paycheck.
As one manager noted, Mike lived to work, often working 60 hours a week.
He cared little for the everyday emotional needs of those he led. His job was to lead. When a sympathetic word of support was required, he delivered it with a dry statement and a faceless smile. It was as if he read it from a book, similar to a bad actor reading dryly from a script.
Life changes.
Mike called me to his office and shut the door after entering. Considering the fact Mike has spoken maybe 15 minutes in the past 18 months, I expected some sort of downsizing. I know personally that a cancer diagnosis can affect a person’s work life to different degrees. Your decisions about working during and after cancer treatment depend on your financial resources, the type of work you do, and the demands of your treatment and recovery. Many people are able to continue working during cancer treatment. Others leave their jobs and then return after active cancer treatment ends. As a result, I tend to always tend to expect the worst.
“My wife has cancer,” Mike said dejectedly.
“I am so sorry.” After a long pause, “What stage?”
“Four.”
He got up from his chair, walked to the window and looked at the rain streaking across the glass. He quivered.
“I am unsure of what to do. The military benefits are insane. I can’t afford the time it takes to fight for referrals, or wait the three months until there is an opening at the specialist, or wait the six months to get my wife a referral at an outside clinic. They tell me I am required to make a co-payment, which is part of the deductible and that I would have to pay the remaining balance if the charges exceed the amount if the care provider is not part of the program. So much god damned paperwork.”
A small part of me wanted to say, “Dude. Welcome to the working world.” I didn’t. However, Mike isn’t alone.
In the road ahead, Mike will face insurmountable “insurance issues,” clerical errors, and times he will have no clue what to do. There will be urgencies. There will be applications for time off under the Family Medical Leave Act, but no salary. There may be a lost promotion, lost position or reassignment. And there will be pharmacuetical challanges.
A cancer patient I met was prescribed a critical self-injected medication to be taken at home. Prior authorization was received. However, the pharmacy handling the case refused to allow the physician’s practice pharmacy to fill the script. So, they forwarded it to the benefit mandated pharmacy. Unfortunately, the mandated pharmacy could not fill the prescription, and without informing the patient or his doctor, they outsourced the prescription to yet another pharmacy.
Then there will be the lies. When hitting the fork in the road, both doctor and loved ones will be forced to make a decision worthy of the Greek heroine Antigone.
Should the patient’s best interest be paramount or the requirements of the system?
Ethical issues are rarely cut and dry because you’ve got competing interests. No cargiver gets up in the morning and says, ‘I’m going to lie to people today.’ It’s more about saying, ‘How do I balance my obligation to be truthful with the desire to be compassionate.'”
Lastly, the hours. Like me, Mike will find endless hours of sitting still while emotions rage. Just as his wife’s body will clamor for relief, the mind will torture in a myriad of ways. Just like Richard Brown character from The Hours:
But I still have to face the hours, don’t I? I mean, the hours after… and the hours after that…
And just like millions before us, Mike will have to learn to be there for it all — to attend to the sensations, recognizing at that moment, as painful or imperfect or frustrating as it was, that this is the actual texture and content of life.
Life’s always changing.
To experience change — to noticed that nothing ever stayed the same — to know these thoughts, emotions, and sensations as the incessant flow of phenomena.
“It is the nature of all things that take form to dissolve again.” — the Buddha