IGTNT

I Got The News Today. Coined to refer to someone answering the door to a sharply uniformed soldier bearing an ominous telegram, today, to me, it means something else: learning of another person's cancer.

Used to be, I thought cancer was for old people. You know, the disease of an industrialized, modern society that eventually catches you up after you've outlived everything else. Old folks and those kids with leukemia whose pictures graced jars of change at supermarket checkouts. I knew a couple people with cancer, here and there. Tragic cases, people whispered, and turned away.

Then when I was in my early twenties, a friend of mine, married with two young kids and pregnant with a third, was diagnosed. The desperate race against time to save both mother and baby didn't make it. The loss opened a gaping hole.

Since then, my father and mother both survived cancer. My grandmother still struggles. And now I've joined the ranks. Since then, it seems cancer is everywhere, particularly cancer of the young. At first it was strangers, stopping me on the street to share stories of their similarly bald-headed nephew, or cousin, or sister. Beautiful, talented, bright, promising young folk - or young adults with kids of their own - snatched away in the flush of their bloom.

And the stories abound of overwhelming costs, of insurance denials, of fundraisers and bake sales and donation funds, of lost jobs and houses, of inadequate care, of outdated techniques, of delayed service. Of lasting, crippling side effects. Of depression, frustration, abandonment, futility.

That is not my story.

I had tremendous support from friends, family, and my employer. I was paid, and encouraged, to relocate anywhere in the US I wanted to go. I was sent to the top civilian doctors, where I received cutting-edge treatment. I continued to work throughout my treatment, but I didn't have to - I still would have received my full salary. I received sizeable housing, food, and cost-of-living allowances, which made it possible to live comfortably in the heart of San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the country. I was allowed as much recovery time as I needed, which I used to visit friends and families on the weekends during chemo. And I didn't pay a penny for my treatment - not for the medications, doctor visits, infusions, transfusions, radiation, scans, blood work, or checkups. Not for anything. No insurance hassles necessary. Most importantly, I had a very treatable form of cancer, caught early.

So it breaks my heart every time I "get the news" and hear of someone else broadsided by cancer in the prime of their life, haggling with insurance, stressed by bills, leaving behind young children and a promising future.

When I was in college, I used to wonder how I'd been so lucky as to win the "birth lottery", finding myself in a middle-class American family, instead of a slum in India, a war zone in Africa, a frozen apartment block in Russia, or maybe abandoned in a dumpster in China, just for being a girl. It's part of why I joined the Coast Guard, to repay my gratitude to a country which had unconsciously invested me with so much.

These days, I find myself wondering how I've been so lucky as to win the "cancer lottery", if I can describe it in such crude terms. I've done nothing more meritorious than the little girl with leukemia, or the young man with pancreatic cancer. How do I lay my worth against the parent who passes on after a short but valiant struggle, leaving behind three young children?

Is there a message? Is there a reason? For what greater purpose have I been saved? What debt do I owe to those who didn't make it? What burden do I bear?