Introduction

I feel self-conscious giving this book the title, Caregiver. Even though I’ve fully dedicated myself to supporting my wife through her cancer treatments, it seems to me that the title I get for this work is self-aggrandizing. Perhaps I prefer “carer.”

The book is not about me. It is about the experience of cancer treatments. But it is written from my perspective. If you are caring for a loved one who has cancer, I suspect you will most appreciate reading this book and looking at the pictures. I don’t know whether the book will be useful to a person who has just gotten a cancer diagnosis; I am pretty sure it may be frightening. But not to those who have been through the ordeal… they will find the images – and the thoughts – familiar, maybe even validating. I expect that this book will frighten you if you are, for the first time, facing the prospect of taking care of a relative with cancer. It may help make you be a bit less anxious as you go through the process. But the process will still be scary.

I think many of the pictures in the book are pretty. (I have had beautiful models.) I believe most of the rest are striking. The story is not pretty, though. However it ends, cancer is a goddamned evil. It hurts people badly. It tries to kill the people we love. It nearly scares us to death. It strains our families until they shred, at least around the edges. And it breaks our backs financially. This is all true whether you win or lose your battle with cancer. I hate cancer.

I know cancer is a mindless, biological phenomenon, but it has attacked my family, and attacked my family again. It has done me grievous harm, even though I have never directly suffered the pain and the indignity of the disease. This book offers no answers because I have no answers. It simply attempts to share my experience of supporting someone I love through this horror.

I am sorry that you are thinking about reading this book. Because it probably means that you are facing the fact that you are now a Caregiver for a person with cancer. I want you to know that I don’t regret a minute of the time I have spent supporting Linda or Corinne (both of whom you will meet here). In fact, I regret having not spent more time with Linda… this is more for my sake than hers because I believe she got the time from me that she wanted and needed.

I think the one thing Caregivers must remember is that we can never know the experience of the person with cancer. I’ve even learned that those who have survived cancer cannot know the experience of our loved one with cancer. But our experience as Caregivers is equally real and valid, fully painful and exhausting. It is often deeply gratifying.

If, one day, I get cancer, I’m not sure that I will choose to undergo the treatments I have witnessed. But, if I do get treatment, I will not expect my doctor or any of the other cancer professionals to commit to this battle with me. I would only engage the battle if I have a comrade in arms to hold my hand, support me and trudge through this every step of the way: what we call a Caregiver.