Offering Comfort

I had a conversation with my mother last night about how great the Gamma Knife is and how I'm glad that I don't have cancer back in the 1960s when so much of it was hopeless and really ugly. We talked a little about whole brain radition and I told her that if it ever came down to that, I don't think that I'd bother. I think that this upset her...not that I wouldn't bother, but that we were in the circumstance of even having the conversation.

So I guess my question for the day is how do you comfort the ones you love? Most people answer that since you are the one with the disease that your family needs to find other people to talk to or find comfort from. But just because you have cancer doesn't mean that you stop being a mother, sister, daughter, or whatever. Not that people should expect to lean on you 100% all of the time, but if you were one source of comfort in the past, why should that not continue, despite your disease being the source of discomfort? Am I not the same Ruth I was before I got the cancer? That Ruth would offer comfort.

I guess that's my answer.