Healing Through Poetry

Carol Miele's Metastatic Madness is this month's Healing Through Poetry feature:

You have to be half-mad to live with this disease,

It seems to have a way of bringing you to your knees.

Cancer cells invade your body and soon they settle in,

Uninvited and unwanted, the beast beneath your skin.

The big, bad chemo drugs like a tsunami, blew it all away,

But like the worst kind of nightmare, it will return someday.

You don’t know when, you don’t know how, you only know it will,

So you clean out closets, throw away old papers and update your Living Will.

People often say, “Well, we’re all going to die, each one of us,

Tomorrow, I could go out and get hit by a car or bus.”

I sometimes wish I would step off a curb and get mowed down by a truck

How much quicker an end that would be than a slow, agonizing one, just my luck.

Tests and treatments, meds and oversight by my oncology team,

I accept that I must comply, but inside I just want to scream.

And all the while, I silently pray it won’t ruin my life plan,

Cause I’d like to see my beautiful grandson grow up to be a man.

And I’d like to see my friends & family just a little longer.

That doesn’t seem like much to ask from the ‘evil cancer monger‘.

Tumor markers, cancer antigens, scans and other tests,

Rule my world like the cancer in my bones and both my breasts.

The truly maddening part is that one day it will spread too far,

And how will I cope as I begin to fade, just like a falling star?

No one knows what lies ahead, as we don’t have a crystal ball,

All we know is that we want someone to catch us when we fall.