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Hm, this thread title sounds like the title of a work of literature, lol.
Anyway ... some of you have asked how my wife is doing so I thought I'd just put it here.
I believe I've mentioned she had two total knee replacements, in July and October of last year. Very challenging surgeries. She didn't bounce back from the second one really well, and was uncharacteristically tired and weepy over nothing, etc. Then she had an "episode" involving pelvic pain and puking and such so we finally induced someone to take a closer look and she has this tumor the size of a mid-term fetus in her abdomen which somehow was not palpated or otherwise noticed through two pre-op clearances last year.
Then a cancer blood test (CA-125) came back leaning pretty strongly toward cancer.
Today she had an MRI and they called her right back and are getting her in for an emergency hysterectomy. We have the initial consult with the "gyno-oncologist" tomorrow, a little over an hour away. It is almost certainly ovarian cancer. The plan is to remove all the plumbing, freeze and section it and put it all under a microscope and get her "typed" (as in Type X cancer) which will give us a prognosis.
There is some hope that it's been caught early enough not to have spread, and the surgery will be sufficient to deal with it.
She's holding up very well. She's not afraid of death, but very much wants to stay alive for her kids and for me. Especially her autistic adult son who lives with us and who she is steering through various therapies and coaching.
This is where the lack of god-belief (and therefore, the expectation of a beneficently god-directed life) comes in very handy. This is just another thing happening, one that we very much don't like. We know the drill. But it's not personal or directed.
We had a good conversation with my stepson today, apprising him of everything. Since the autistic tend to wonder how everything impacts them, I assured him that in the worst case scenario he and I are solid and nothing will change in terms of where he lives, etc. Like me, he is mostly just numb at this point. And waiting.
I am so sorry to hear all of this, and I am hoping for the best possible outcome for your wife and family. I cannot imagine how difficult it has been getting hit with one thing right after the other. We have an adult son with Down syndrome that still lives at home, so yeah, I have a feel on how that plays into the situation. May the marvels of modern medicine deliver her from all of this!
All my best wishes for a full recovery.
***I have to admit that your subject line caught my attention, and having read some of your posts in the past, I thought "interesting".
@mordant I am sorry to hear about your wife, I know it is hard and will not get any easier for a while. Take care of yourself so you can better take care of your wife.
Sorry to hear to scary news. Not knowing is always the hardest part.
It's good you know the relief you can experience being able to turn the problem over to all those things that are more powerful than us.
I encourage you to expect beneficence also. Why not? There will be both struggles and gifts along the way. Keep your eyes open for the good stuff. It, like the rain, falls on all of us.
Greetings from O'Darby. For oddball reasons, I no longer have access to the O'Darby email or password and thus am forced to be O'Darbo for purposes of this post. I haven't been here in months and don't plan to be here regularly, but the OP caught my eye. I do have experience with losing a wife to breast cancer, among other tragedies, and believe the OP raises some fundamental "Religious & Spirituality" issues. I am entirely sympathetic to the circumstances of Mordant and his wife, so please do not take any of my observations as harsh or critical toward them.
When tragedies such as this strike, we are forced to deal with them from whatever perspective on ultimate reality we have at the time. It is extremely difficult to decide what one believes after tragedy strikes. If we have to seek (or invent) a belief system on the fly in the face of tragedy, it is almost inevitable that we will grasp at any straw of meaning and hope. When my late wife was diagnosed with cancer, we were both very grateful that our belief systems had been solidly in place for many years. They were not Pollyanna-ish, mindless beliefs but firm convictions arrived at after long study and reflection.
Although my and my wife's respective beliefs were somewhat different, they were diametrically opposed to those of Mordant. We both held strong convictions in an overarching meaning and purpose to our earthly existence and in the survival of consciousness. These convictions were the primary reason that the doctors and cancer center staff were simply agog at the grace with which my wife faced her treatment and death. (I've mentioned elsewhere that after her death I had three compelling, objective, real-world After Death Communications that reinforced my own convictions.)
Mordant suggests that he derives comfort (or something like it) from his atheistic beliefs. I don't know the full scope of his atheism, so I will posit a straw man atheist who believes earthly life has no overarching meaning or purpose, tragedies are random events that "just happen," and there is no afterlife. If someone holds strong, well-informed convictions in this vein when tragedy strikes, then he is forced to deal with the tragedy on these terms. To jet off to Lourdes in hopes of a miracle would be an obvious act of desperation.
I find it impossible to believe that any atheist actually derives comfort from the convictions I have posited for my straw man. To say this strikes me as self-evidently nonsensical. Yes, an atheist with strong convictions is forced by intellectual honesty to deal with tragedy on these terms. But to derive comfort from such convictions? No, hardly.
Mordant describes his convictions as "very handy" because he is spared any notion of his wife's cancer being visited upon her by a deity and/or any false hope of a deity working a miracle. Again, this is the perspective that someone with strong atheistic convictions is intellectually forced to have, although I find the description "very handy" almost as odd as I would find the description "comforting."
In the abstract, it seems obvious to me that convictions such as my wife and I held would be far more comforting than atheistic convictions could ever be. Not only did our convictions infuse every aspect of our marriage and lives with deeper meaning and purpose, but they also gave us an entirely different perspective on her illness and a hope for eternity. Comforting? Yes, indeed.
We did not believe that my wife's cancer had been visited upon her by any malevolent deity. We did, however, believe that it was God's plan for her life and our marriage and that such illnesses serve God's plan for humanity. Yes, she died at 54 when she might well have lived to 104 (or 14, for that matter). In the great scheme of things as we conceived of it, the age of death is no big deal. Moreover, not only with my wife's illness but with a million other tragedies I have seen the tremendously beneficial effects and ripples of such events. I have no difficulty whatsoever with the notion that the reality in which we find ourselves is entirely consistent with a omnibenevolent deity who has an eternal perspective and plan.
(Yes, we prayed for a miracle remission if it were consistent with the God's will, but with the acceptance that miracles are few and far between. We were in no way disappointed or bitter when no miracle occurred and were very grateful for seven wonderful years and a peaceful passing. We often said those were the best years of our 33-year marriage.)
The perspective that what Mordant and his wife are experiencing is inconsistent with the existence of an omnibenevolent deity strikes me as a very parochial (i.e., finite human) perspective on what such a deity "should" be like and what the creation of such a deity "should" look like. Even from my finite human perspective, it seems to me that a reality such as we experience, with all its tragedy and suffering - much of it the result of the misuse of human free will - is pretty much exactly what I would expect of an omnibenevolent deity whose purposes are what Christianity posits them to be.
The bottom line, of course, is: What is ontologically true? If the straw man's atheism is true, so be it - I will have derived comfort from false convictions, strong and well-informed as they may have been, and will simply go poof when I die. If my convictions are true, the straw man atheist will have lived with false convictions that provided no hope or comfort but will be in for a surprise in the end (a happy one, we hope, although Christianity certainly doesn't guarantee this to an atheist). All that each of us can do is be diligent about making sure our convictions are as strong and well-informed as they can be - hopefully before tragedy strikes.
Best wishes to Mordant and his wife, but his description of his atheistic convictions as "very handy" is simply what someone with such convictions is pretty much forced to say. I would describe my own convictions as "exceedingly more beneficial," but all that each of us can do is deal with tragedy on the basis of what we sincerely believe.
Last edited by O'Darbo; 02-13-2024 at 10:15 AM..
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