Comfort those in pain

Last year 556,500 Americans lost their battles with cancer.\nWhen we're emotionally uncomfortable as people, we try to find mental safety nets to give us the comfort we are seeking. But sometimes we need to give up our nets of safety so that we might comfort the uncomfortable.\nI have a pretty good friend lying in the Bloomington Hospital oncology ward right now, and he's been there most of the summer. With the onslaught of side affects from chemotherapy and radiation, he really can't remember a time before last January when he felt good. His days have been plagued by the emotional turmoil brought about by facing his own mortality: "When I'm in remission, how long will it be before I go back to work?" "If I can't make remission what's gonna happen to my family -- who's gonna take care of them?" "I'd really like to not throw up today, for once."\nBut since January, only a handful of people outside of family members have made that leap and visited with regularity. Many of his coworkers have all but forgotten him, so he's pretty much dealt with all this discomfort on his own.\nCancer is an infamous word. It's a pretty scary word, too, because before the age of medical miracles in which we all live now, cancer was pretty much a death sentence. \nIt's even more scary since you're never fully cured. You're just in remission for a period of time that no one can predict. I know a woman who has been in remission from breast cancer for 12 years and went on to have a daughter, even though doctors said the chemo would pretty much prevent that from happening. But I also know of someone who was in remission for 18 months. He's been dead 5 years.\nWe all have stories like these which make us aware that cancer is a nightmare for everybody and that survival is a crapshoot. This crapshoot makes us uncomfortably aware of our own mortality. But see, while we all either know someone or will know someone diagnosed with cancer, we can't let it make us so uncomfortable that we withdraw from our friends and loved ones during a time when we're needed the most.\nWhile people who don't have cancer may be uncomfortable visiting a friend or doing something with a friend who has cancer, we aren't the ones fighting it. They are. Before I knew him, I never fully realized the human face of cancer. I'd never emptied a bed pan, helped a 50-year-old get his legs back into bed or pulled 170 pounds of humanity up six inches in a hospital bed so there'd be room for a tray of food. After a while, the cafeteria food even seems pretty good. I do all of this knowing in some small way, it does something that maybe brings a smile, a laugh and a little comfort to someone who needs it way more than I do. Just then, he needed my safety net. I knew that by giving him my safety net, I would open myself up to a little pain and a little discomfort. Since knowing him, I've thought even more about my own demise -- not a comforting thought for a 21-year-old. \nWe can't let our own discomfort override the fact in their worst times of trouble and despair, our friends need to be comforted, even if it means we need to get rid of our safety net of comfort.\nLast year, 556,500 Americans lost their battles with cancer.