Great minds think a lot!
             - Marge DeVito

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MARGE'S WRITING

My mother kept a journal, though not a daily recounting of her life she document her "recovery" and her feelings. She also wrote many wonderful letters. She was a fantastic correspondent, and sent long letters to many of her friends and family members regularly. She secretly wanted to be a writer, and it shows. Her words contain a lot of insight to how it is to deal with cancer.. but she was often afraid to share this insight because it might de-motivate other survivors/sufferers of cancer. She was disgusted with the inspirational survivor stories though, and so her words contain something closer to unvarnished truth. Here are a few excerpts of her writing, the bulk of which I hope to put in book format soon, and will make available here. I have done some editing, mostly minor spelling and grammar and choosing an overall sequence to make it more cohesive as a single document. To do this I have moved paragraphs from one section to another and so had to change the tense here and there. I hope she will forgive me these small liberties. -Torre DeVito

I am a survivor, but what does that mean to people like me, when being a survivor can seem to mean that cancer rules their lives? How I hate the side effects. Never being completely without some pain, never being able to eat properly again. One arm huge from lymphodema that draws stares in public. Not being able to wear my dentures and the horrible way it is starting to make me look as a result. And the lymphodema doesn't just effect my arm but has altered the size of one of my breasts so that that I have terrible discomfort if I wear a bra, so I go out all saggy and ugly as my clothing all shifts to one side.

Being a survivor means hardly ever having a voice and feeling impatient and frustrated, trying to communicate with my husband Tony. Not being able to talk on the phone with friends, fearing that I wont be able to communicate in an emergency. Not sleeping because of fear, depression, bowel problems. The never ending barrage of appointments, tests, medication. But I am a survivor, so I try to see myself as lucky.

I see the survivor stories on the commercials and in the magazine articles that say "I survived the big "C" and learned a wonderful lesson."

I hate those stories.

My story isn't about how I fought the big 'C' and won, or how cancer taught me some great lesson, it's about how awful this disease is. It's not about 'why me' either, because that would imply that it should be someone else. And if it was someone else, who would I choose? My children? My husband, whom I dearly love? My grand children? My daughter-in-law who is so dear to me?

Ten years from now what will the treatment of cancer be? Everyone believes it will be a disease of the past, so are we the last poor suckers to deal with it? To have friends die of it? Why? Of course there is no answer, at least not one that would satisfy us right now. Sure, we could beat our chests and rant and rave - but it would not change our lots one whit, other than perhaps negatively - a back step into stored anger.

There are times when anger must be good - but I don't know how in my current situation. Complaining will not improve one single thing.