Not like TV

I don't know if any of you watch Desperate Housewives. It is one of my guilty pleasures. If you haven't been keeping up or have no idea about the show there is a character named Lynette who has been battling cancer this season. Complete with bald head, she enacts what it is like to be a cancer patient and takes us for the ride...albeit a short ride lasting as long as a handful of episodes.

In a previous episode we see Lynette's rage over a possum left to damage her garden when she is too busy with chemo treatments. She is so angry that she even wants to get a gun to shoot the varmint. I think in the end rat poison does the trick. The anger over the possum is just misplaced anger as she yells about the "invader" who is trying to ruin her family's home. This invader, of course, is really her cancer.

Her oncologist comes to the door one evening (now this is truly TV fed fantasy here) to tell her the news that her cancer is gone. She takes it all in and rushes outside to her garden and spreads her arms wide to the night sky and cries. It is all over. Unfortunately, Scruffles, the possum is all over as well....finally lieing dead in her garden. Lynette tells the dead animal she is sorry.

It was an emotionally moving scene despite the apparent silliness of it all. Stealing a scene from Caddyshack and implanting it within a tale about cancer...it was clever enough.

I was more moved by it, however, as I have a friend who has breast cancer. She is still going through the long process of chemo and the latest is, that she can hardly feel "Fred" anymore. Fred is her nickname for her tumor. And I must say, I cannot imagine what all she is going through. I can only stand by and watch the evolution of the conquering of her...invader.

After that particular episode of Desperate Housewives aired, I had a little cathartic cry.

I thought about my own disease. Whereas cancer can be vanquished and gotten rid of, Multiple Sclerosis cannot. There is no cure. There will be no triumphant opening my arms to the night sky and feeling grateful that this is all gone. The reality is, that my MS will never be gone. It may be stalled somewhat, but more than likely it will progress despite all our medicinal advances. No experience can be compared to another, but nonetheless it is human nature to do so.

My reality is that I will most likely never get better but I will gradually get worse. At best, I will remain as is but I will never be as I was. I will have Multiple Sclerosis for the rest of my life.

And I know that this is the same reality for many of us with MS. And a stupid TV show allowed me to cry about it.

Strangely....I am feeling more okay about all this. I will need to accept before I can move on. Maybe I won't have some made for TV victorious moment, but I can still enjoy all the very real moments I do have, despite my disease.

And I have no desire to kill a possum or groundhog as the case may be.