There’s a lion in my room.

I guess I wanted to write something for those people out there who have a lion in there room…

Being the wife of someone who is dealing with cancer I feel like a lot of the time I’m this huge giant mess running around under the guise of a put together caretaker...i’m not….I have my days I’m sure…but on most days fear likes to accompany me pretty much everywhere I go. Why am I telling you this? Well when I was talking about a lion in my room…. I was referring to fear…but not just any fear…the fear I’m talking about is a special little gift saved for those people who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis, be it yourself, a brother, sister, parent, friend, or in my case my husband.

But what are we afraid of?

I can speak only for myself on this one but I know that when I first found out that Nima had cc my entire world shifted. I went from living MY life to wanting to protect Nimas…no matter what that meant. I decided I needed to find out everything this cc was made of…get to know this attacker…. find out its weaknesses. Because of this I inevitably had to visit the idea of death no matter how much it scared me. No matter how you slice this you just cant ignore it…and not talking about it does nothing to make it go away…. trust me I tried. The conversations about death when Nima was first diagnosed never happened…. not even a question to that fact. He was going to make it and that’s that.

Since Nima’s relapse I’ve visited the idea of death more and more. At first I would hate myself for the thought…I think I felt as though the very thought of death was almost an open invitation. I could see it in my head on a blank white card:

Nima and Shahrzad would like to invite you death to a dinner party e.t.c

So every time the thought of Nima dying fought its way into my mind I simply pushed it out…there was no way I was going to scare Nima…even if that meant that there would be things left unsaid if the worst was to happen.

So what exactly am I trying to say?

Well one lazy afternoon on the couch my wonderful husband looked at me and asked

“Joonam…. do you want to talk about death?”

And after having the “death” talk and saying everything we needed each other to know I realized something great…. we were both relieved!

Now that this whole transplant situation has come up, I feel like I really want to share this with anyone who has a lion in their room.

What im trying to say is this:

Imagine you have a lion in your room. He’s there and you’ve found ways to avoid him but there is still a huge chance that one day….no matter how many precautions you’ve taken...the lion will get you. So what would you prefer?

Would you want your friends and family to pretend that the lion is not there…. fight the statistics of lions in rooms, ask for someone else to check and see if the lion is there, never even talk about the lion?

Or would you want them to accept it as you have done and be there for you?

Because bottom line accepting the lion in your room in no way means that you have given up and you SHOULD keep looking for ways to get rid of him…don’t always listen to lion wranglers (ok maybe I’m taking this metaphor a bit too far haha….but doctors can be wrong). But denying his existence only makes the person whose lion we are talking about feel alone in their fear.

The Lion is there…we are not going to live our lives being afraid of the day that he gets us… because I really believe that he wont... but we’ve made sure to say the things we’ve needed to say…. just in case.

Thanks for letting me write this hubby.