Monday, December 22, 2008

Why? Why Not?

This quote is from Herding Zebras

When I start asking “why me”, I turn to…
Isaiah 6:8
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
..and say “why not me”.
Like the saying goes, “It is choice, not chance, that determines your destiny.” We control how we react to bad situations. Life isn’t about fair or unfair. Life is about the ability to choose. Some things, like cancer, cushing’s and life threatening illnesses give us little or no choice in the matter. Most of us do not raise our hand and say pick me. What we do have is the ability to choose on how we react to it and how we let it define us or rather, how we redefine ourselves after facing something tragic.

Over the last 25 years or so I've asked myself the same question, like most of us have, I'm sure.  My dad was from the Why Not? school so I kind of leaned that way, too.

If someone had to get Cushing's why wouldn't it be me?  But the main question is why anyone had to get Cushing's in the first place.  It's not like a disease caused by bacteria or parasites where another organism is trying to live and prosper.  Cushing's just is.

Did I get it because of my problem pregnancies or were did I miscarry because of yet-undiagnosed Cushing's?

What was the event that changed my life from relatively normal to that of a Cushie?  Was it the hard whack on the back of my head?  Doctors would never commit to that but I always wondered.

Was it related to my years of adult acne, my ever-present extra weight...or just because?

I'm sure I'll never know the answer to any of those questions without a doubt but I feel very sure that I was somehow selected to get Cushing's.  When I had Cushing's, I'd never even touched a computer, let alone thought about websites but it just seemed that somehow it was meant to be that I go through Cushing's and create this site. 

But why do any of us get this?  Is it to fund doctors and surgeons?  I think not but I don't know the answer.  Why do our hormones go berserk on us? Why is one person cured with "only" one surgery while others require three, four, more?  If 25% of all people have pituitary tumors why do only some of them cause Cushing's?

It's a puzzlement!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So...I was maybe "chosen" to have Cushing's.  Why in the world did I get cancer on top of that?  And why wasn't it colon cancer like all of my relatives?

I know one thing for sure - there's not going to be another website for kidney cancer!

I think it's time for a break from serious illness. 

Why not me?

1 comment:

  1. Mary, if the purpose was to help others, then you have done that a thousand-fold...or more.
    XOXOOXoX
    Robin

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