Happy Halloween!

Today is Halloween. But we will not have trick or treaters until Friday night. Significant portions of the town do not have power and there are still trees downed all over the place.

We had a little storm on Sunday night with wind gusts here to around 50 mph but other places on the coast in the 80-90 mph. A little hurricane came up the east coast and joined up with another front moving east across the country. Their little party was slammed by a Canadian cold front which turned into a massive storm. We got 5" (just think if that was snow) of rain. So no trick or treating for safety's sake for a few days. (But I think all the smart kids are going to get their parents to take them to another town tonight and then back home on Friday so they can trick or treat twice.)

But I digress. Years ago, all my friends and I would dress up in our costumes and go to parties for Halloween. That was possible because we were in our twenties and had the ability to stay up after 10 pm and didn't really care how we looked like. And it was all about having fun.

One year, a friend showed up in regular clothes. We all asked her what her costume was. She said she was a serial killer 'because they looked like everyone else'.

This now makes me think. When you have cancer, you usually pretty much look like yourself and get around, until your cancer progresses and life starts to really suck because it includes a deadline.

So along that thinking, I could dress up as a cancer patient and say 'because we look like everyone else'. Or I could dress up as a rheumatoid arthritis/fibromyalgia patient for the same reason. (Or because my leg is in a big brace, I could dress up as Captain Hook with a peg leg... But that might be too much work.)

My point is that we can easily overlook people because their diseases do not show. We may have some very significant ailments that greatly impact our lives but they do not show to the rest of the world. We are just regular people with health issues. Do we need special treatment? Maybe, maybe not, or maybe just a handicapped parking space. Just remember that appearances can be deceiving and we can be hiding a lot under our normal appearances.

But you don't look sick

One of the first complaints I heard from other cancer people was that how could they have such a bad thing when they didn't look sick? To this day, I may feel like crap but I don't really look sick.

If you have cancer, you usually don't look sick unless you are in the middle of chemo that gives you that lovely pallor and hair loss. Some chemos don't even give you that look these days. I met a woman a couple of years ago with stage IV lung cancer who looked great and was on an oral chemo. She said she took a daily pill and felt pretty good as well.

We are wired to look for visible ailments in people. Do you ever look at someone getting out of a car with a handicapped placard who looks fine and wonder what is really wrong with them? Maybe its a respiratory ailment or heart condition, but we are suspicious. We expect to see someone with a few medical 'accoutrements' (how's that for sneaking in a big word so early in the day?) such as a cane, walker, etc.

If we hear someone has cancer, we expect to see a pale face with a few straggles of hair peeking out from under a hat or scarf, who is rail thin. But that is less common than the past. If you hang out in the waiting room at the oncology department, you see more people like that but certainly not everyone.


Most people don't realize how many ailments I have. When I had my double ear infection this summer, I was informed I looked pale. When I wear my wrist split for tennis elbow/arthritis, people regularly ask me what's wrong - even total strangers. Maybe I need a full body cast for people to get the point.

But I don't look sick

When people see me who don't know my health disasters, they probably don't think I have anything wrong with me. Well that just goes back to the fact that appearances can be deceiving. Have you ever hunted through a parking lot for a single space and then seen a seemingly healthy person park in a handicapped spot in the front row and stroll into the store while you drive in circles? They may have a respiratory problem which prevents them from walking long distances or some other ailment that does not have visual symptoms.

Us cancer people may be harboring some nasty things inside but usually don't look too bad - unless we are sporting our chemo 'hair cut' and pallor. At our first diagnosis, while we are waiting for surgery, treatment, and full staging, we may look as healthy as can be even if we contain multiple tumors.

Now I go to a gym where its full of healthy looking, dilapidated people. I was speaking with one of the owners recently and he said everyone there has significant health problems. But most of them, unless they are on oxygen, a walker, wheelchair, missing a limb, or other obvious ailment, look pretty darn healthy because they work out. Recently I went  hiking and was pleasantly surprised at how well I did on a very hot day. It shows my regular work outs are helping me significantly.

But if I compare myself to most of my friends and colleagues, I have more health issues alone than they all do combined. But at least I don't look sick.

Being healthy til we are not

Kind of logical, isn't it? We are healthy until all of a sudden, some nice medical professionally diplomatically states 'you have X'. Well, with cancer, usually, it is asymptomatic. you don't feel sick. You might think there might be a lump or something, but more often then not something is found by a screening. All of a sudden, your life has changed and you get to go to the doctor all the time.

But cancer is the funny thing. You technically are sick but you probably don't feel sick, except while in chemo, you probably don't look sick. I can say I have had cancer twice, and a few other medically maladies, but yesterday someone said to me 'but you look really healthy'.

So maybe we can look healthy even when we aren't healthy. We can pretend to be healthy and live our lives as best we can. We might have a bedside table covered with a dozen prescription bottles (I just counted) and time our day through when we take our next set of pills, but we are still here and we can't hope for more.