When I was told I had Desmoplastic Small Round Cell Tumors three years ago, I took the diagnosis better than pretty much anyone else I knew. I didn’t wonder why or despair or curse my fate. I just accepted it and carried on as best I could. Some of that is no doubt due to my generally carefree nature and the fact that my own diagnosis didn’t contradict my understanding of the world and how God relates to it (which is why I wrote a book on the subject). But I also attribute a good part of this to the fact that I’m the one—rather than someone I love—who’s going through all this hellish treatment.
It would be far worse to sit and watch someone else I care about enduring round after round of chemo until I lost count, surgery followed by surgery followed by still more surgeries, debilitating radiation treatment that made eating all but impossible, and a pair of clinical trials. And then repeat it all for a second year. And a third. And counting. I’d rather go through these years of intense, difficult treatment myself than see someone I love endure it for a single day. I’m not the only one who thinks this way.
Several people have expressed to me that they wish it could be them, not me, going through it all. It is, I think, a natural reaction when we see people we care about suffering and struggling. We want to take their troubles from them, to carry their burdens and give them some respite from their trials. We’re made to experience empathy, after all, to feel others’… [Read more…] about Incarnate Empathy
