CHAPTER FOUR: HOPE, ONE DRIP AT A TIME
(Originally published Nov. 5, 2007 in the Kamloops Daily News)
By Catherine Litt
Daily News Staff Reporter
“Don’t worry, everything is out of control.” When Ron Kopytko heard those words, he felt strangely at peace for the first time in months.
Ever since he’d been told he was dying of terminal prostate cancer in October 2006, he had indeed been worrying that everything was out of control. His cancer. His life. Time.
Now, here was someone telling him not to worry, that, in a weird and wonderful way, everything was supposed to be out of control.
“Don’t try to make things certain, there is no such thing. You’ll disturb your mind,” Ajahn Sona had said to him.
“Wishing and wanting things to be certain … I have a saying that I teach people: Don’t worry, everything is out of control.”
For much of the spring and summer of 2007, Ron’s wife had been urging him to visit Ajahn Sona, the venerable abbot of Sitavana Buddhist Forest Monastery near Kamloops.
Leann had gone to the monastery on a retreat with a co-worker earlier that year and was drawn to the Buddhist philosophy, particularly its messages around the relief of suffering. This is exactly what Ron needs, she thought.
Ron paid his first visit to the monastery in July.
After the September fundraiser at Colombo Lodge, he decided another visit was in order; He was emotionally drained, and he still hadn’t made up his mind about the chemotherapy or the Casodex clinical trial. If ever he needed a second dose of Buddhist wisdom, it was then. And so he and Leann drove the 40 kilometres south to Sitavana on Sept. 28 in search of spiritual guidance from a man they had both come to trust.
“If it were you, would you do the chemo?” Leann asked the abbot.
“Yes, I would,” he said. The Buddhist religion focused on the relief of suffering, he told them. If Ron wanted to start chemotherapy now, while he was still strong, then he should do it.
No one was denying the reality that Ron’s cancer was terminal. In fact, on Ron’s first visit in July, Ajahn Sona had helped him come to terms with death and dying.
“The Buddhist religion is more about what you can do, yourself, in terms of shaping your thinking, about how to respond to the inevitable difficulties, problems and illness that come in life,” he had said.
“Do we have to suffer? How can we lighten the suffering? By attitudes.”
What he meant was that Ron needed to refocus his thinking.
Ever since Ron could remember, he had feared death. Having chronic pancreatitis since age 25 didn’t help; each time Ron was due for another surgery, he worried for days in advance that he might die on the operating table.
Now death was staring him square in the face.
“This is not abnormal,” Ajahn Sona told him, his voice calm and reassuring.
“What’s happening here is totally normal, totally natural. It’s not a problem in the sense that it shouldn’t be happening. … We’re all going to die. We’re all mortal. The only question is when. That’s the only thing we don’t know.”
It was heady stuff but it resonated with Ron. He couldn’t change what was happening to his body – he was dying and he needed to accept reality – but he could change how he reacted to it.
The following Wednesday, Oct. 3, after a weekend deep in thought, Ron picked up the phone and called Janice MacDonald, patient care co-ordinator at the Kamloops Cancer Clinic.
“I want to do the chemo,” he said. “When can we start?”
His decision was made. He would take his first drips of Docetaxel in two and half weeks.
The hard part was over.
***********
That afternoon, Ron sat on the couch in his living room and searched for something to watch on TV, something to take his mind off the pain.
The pain in his lower back and hips was worse than ever. Sitting, standing, lying. Nothing seemed to help. And so he hoped maybe some television might take his mind off it.
Ever since the winter, when he and Leann sold their auto detailing business because of Ron’s illness, there wasn’t much to occupy is days except TV and the occasional visit from friends. But these days the TV seemed a more frequent companion.
Friends didn’t call as much as they did in the early months of Ron’s diagnosis. He would never say it but the diminishing calls hurt.
It got him thinking about his friend Chris who had died a couple of years ago from pancreatic cancer. Near the end, when the sickness had taken its grip and bad days were more common than good ones, Ron would visit Chris and together they’d watch the NASCAR races on TV or just sit and talk.
Sometimes Chris would close his eyes and fall asleep mid conversation but Ron never complained; he stayed until Chris woke up so his friend would always see someone there when he opened his eyes.
Chris was grateful. “In times like this, you always know who your friends are,” he told Ron.
Other friends had stopped visiting Chris. Maybe they didn’t know what to say. Maybe they were worried they’d say the wrong thing. After all, how do you look at a man who’s dying and try to pretend, try to ignore it, try to carry on as if there wasn’t this backdrop of death haunting the conversation.
Ron wondered how long it would be before his own friends started dropping out of sight.
They were still coming to visit but the phone calls were fewer and he wondered how long it would be before the doorbell stopped ringing. He had already heard some disturbing news. An old friend of his had been asked if he was planning to visit Ron, to which he replied “Oh. Well, I don’t see much point in that now.”
***********
But Ron had far more pressing concerns besides the absence of friends. He was worried about Leann and how she was coping with everything.
These last few weeks had been just as hard on her. She had gone to every appointment with Ron. She felt his frustration, his anxiety. Every ache in his ribs and back, the constant nausea, she might as well have had that too.
On top of everything, she was holding down a job and taking care of the children, Jake and Alyssa, trying to bring some sense of normalcy to their home life, despite the extraordinary situation they were in.
She had also been keeping friends and family updated on Ron’s health through a blog she had set up.
On Oct. 11, she entered an update. “In a about a week, it will have been 12 months since Ron was diagnosed,” she wrote. “It still seems surreal for us both. He is as handsome today as he was the day I married him.”
They had celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary during the summer along with Leann’s 40th birthday, and, as with all family gatherings and special occasions, those were shrouded by thoughts of the future.
It was inescapable, that constant ticking clock that followed them. No matter how many times they tried to ignore it, tried to go about their day without wondering if this was the last time they’d celebrate a birthday or an anniversary, their thoughts always came back to that.
“Time is so precious,” said Leann. “And you just watch it fly.”
********
On the morning of Ron’s first chemotherapy session, Oct. 22, Leann was nervous.
“I hope we’re doing the right thing,” she said. “I just hope this isn’t the beginning of a downhill slide.”
Ron was nervous, too. All those doctors’ appointments and discussions about chemo versus Casodex, it all came down to this, another visit to the eighth floor of Royal Inland Hospital.
Ron and Leann stepped off the elevator and walked down the long hallway, past Room 803, past the nurse’s station, to a smaller room with two pink reclining chairs, one of which had an IV pole with a digital box attached to it. That was Ron’s chair.
As nurse Jacquie Ciancone helped Ron wrap his left forearm in a heater pad in preparation for the IV, Leann looked around the room and noticed something on the bulletin board.
“What are you stealing?” asked Ron, smiling. “I know you too well.”
It was a poem about cancer. Leann brought it over to Ron.
He read the words silently, then out loud.
“What cancer cannot do. Cancer is so limited, it cannot cripple love, it cannot shatter hope, it cannot corrode faith, it cannot destroy peace. It cannot kill friendship, it cannot suppress memories. It cannot silence courage. It cannot invade the soul. It cannot steal eternal life, it cannot conquer the spirit. Author unknown.”
It would make another good tattoo, he thought.
A week earlier, he had gone back to the tattoo parlor to finish the lotus flower on his right forearm with the words ‘Don’t worry, everything’s out of control.’
Since his diagnosis, Ron had added several tattoos to his body. The Serenity Prayer, a tiny map of the Hawaiian islands, and now the lotus flower with the words spoken by Ajahn Sona.
“Ooh, I like that,” said Nurse Ciacone. “Don’t worry, everything is out of control. I like that.”
Ciacone inserted the IV into Ron’s arm and pressed a combination of buttons on the digital box attached to the IV pole.
“OK, you’re all set,” she said.
Ron and Leann watched the first drips of chemo go down the IV tube.
Tiny drips of hope.
xplorexpress
November 8, 2007
A dear friend of mine just lost her husband to prostate cancer. The doctor refused to have him pass the tests even though a 2005 PSA test showed elavated numbers. This 2005 PSA test was not followed by more in depth exams which could have save the life of a marvelous young man. He left Earth in atrocious pain because the doctor never gave him medication for cancer. Up to the death of this young man, the doctor refused to see cancer. He was refered to an oncologist only one month before his death, after more then 2 years of intense suffering. The cancer was already everywhere in his body, even in his brain.
I am presently writing a book on the “misdiagnosis” subject or the refusing from the doctors to pass tests to patients on the pretext they are too young for such disease or other excuses. I am presently collecting information and stories relevant to medical misdiagnosis or disregard.
You can send me e-mails @ xplorexpress@yahoo.ca
Hope with all my heart that Ron will recover.
bobbyrtd
November 12, 2007
I too am stage 4 advanced prostate cancer with a recent psa jump from 82 to 142. Will be starting chemo within the month. I have survived for nearly 5 years now since being diagnosed. I’ve had continuous hormone shots and casodex, but I guess my time is coming soon. It’s nice to hear from others that are in the same boat as I.
pepsidoddle
January 27, 2008
I heard about your story from a co-worker from kamloops one day at work. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer May 31st of 2007, at the age of 51 . I underwent surgury in September and so far everything is going well all things considered.AlI I have to do is blood tests for the first year every two months. The serenity prayer that you mentioned has become my mantra. Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this difficult time.