| |
|
Karen and Chris Grayson upon his induction into the
Bethel College Athletic hall of Fame in 1999, the
year before Karen was diagnosed with breast cancer. |
There are many different kinds of love stories, each
with its own unique poignancy. And despite the allure of
Romeo-and-Juliet-type tragedies, where young love ends
tragically at the height of its yearning, the best love
stories are those that last "forever" in human terms;
where vows made make it through the realities of "better
or worse", "richer and poorer", and "sickness and health."
In June 2000, a couple who began creating their own love
story after meeting as students at Bethel College 25 years
earlier encountered an obstacle that proved to be most
difficult of their marriage. The struggle came when Karen
Grayson, remembered by McKenzians as Karen Beal, was
diagnosed with breast cancer.
Karen met Chris Grayson when he was a star basketball
player at Bethel College and she was a cheerleader at the
college located in her hometown. Chris, from the small
town of New Washington Indiana near Louisville Kentucky,
had chosen the college, as if divinely inspired, from a
variety of opportunities open to a player of his talent.
Their fairytale beginnings are highlighted in a book Chris
wrote to share his family's ordeal with breast cancer:
A Stranger in Our House.
The stranger first made himself known the day Karen
advised Chris a routine mammogram had revealed a
suspicious area that warranted further study. "I felt a
banging inside my heart, as if someone had just slammed
the screen door and broken into our house," Chris wrote,
sharing his reaction to the news. "That
'happily-ever-after' ending had suddenly been thrown into
doubt by complications too scary to consider."
Chris, who had followed in his father and grandfather's
footsteps to become an embalmer and funeral director
explains, "As a funeral director I see only the bad in
cancer. I see the death and destruction that it causes
families and because of that I was expecting the worse for
our situation."
He reasoned that since he and Karen had always met life's
demands as a team - not separating duties into categories
of "his" or "hers" but, he wrote in the book, "... sharing
our responsibilities through equal involvement... in
tandem, cooperatively" - they should approach the
treatment of the cancer in the same way.
"We decided to attack this new hurdle facing us the same
way we handled a hamper of dirty laundry or a yard full of
leaves. As the spouse in this situation, I felt it was
important for me to participate in everything I could," he
wrote. He threw himself, heart and soul, into the task of
ousting the intruder, spending long hours researching the
disease.
The couple's plan to meet the enemy together on the
battlefield was thwarted when, on their first visit to the
hospital for the biopsy, Chris was laughingly advised his
presence was not permitted in the operating room.
"Instead," he wrote, "I faced a room full of silent
relatives, all deeply concerned with what was happening to
their loved ones behind those closed doors. We were all
rendered irrelevant, shunted aside and sedated with the
standard waiting room diversions: a soap opera on the TV,
shopworn issues of People magazine, redundant coded
messages on the intercom. My frustration quickly kindled
into anger."
The next few days, while awaiting the results of the
biopsy, Chris was unable to escape the possibilities
confronting him and Karen. In his book, he outlines with
frank honesty questions not only of life and death but
also of lifestyle, sexuality and the powerlessness of
wading through waters too darkly colored to be certain of
steady footing, too winding to know the length of the
course.
"In the beginning," he wrote, "I thought I was handling
the situation okay, but the strains of waiting and
uncertainty became progressively greater. I remember Bill
Cosby explaining how his father administered punishment:
'Next Thursday, you're going to get a whipping.' The
anticipation multiplied the pain until it weighed him down
like an impending death sentence. I felt a similar,
accumulating sense of dread."
A second biopsy, during which Chris was once again denied
the privilege - or right - of remaining with his wife,
confirmed the malignancy of the tumor. He and Karen
listened at home on separate telephones as the news was
delivered. "My knees buckled," Chris wrote, "I just sank
to the middle of the floor. The heaviest weight in the
world pressed down on me, grinding me into the carpet, and
I pounded my fist into the floor with wordless despair."
After Karen finished the phone call, she and Chris lay on
their bed and talked for a few minutes before Chris, in
complete despair, cried "unstoppable tears; a rushing
flood from an overburdened soul" as Karen assumed the role
of comforter.
In the days and months to come, both Karen and Chris
relied heavily upon the support of family, friends, and
their pastor, Reverend James Cash, who prayed with the
couple and advised them to place the matter in God's
hands.
But Chris was unable to relax as time progressed. At each
appointment for surgery or post-operative radiation
treatments, his need to be with his wife was thwarted by
medical personnel intent upon upholding "hospital policy",
dreaded words that meant he was relegated to another
waiting room, not knowing what was happening to his wife,
unable to support her during her time of greatest need.
The disease became an obsession with Chris, encompassing
his time and energy to the detriment of work and family.
His anger, frustration and helplessness combined to
control his behavior, his compulsions ranging from
ceaseless Internet searches to rages against medical
personnel that overflowed into arguments at home. The
lines between concern for his wife and self-pity at his
own helplessness became blurred until even Chris
questioned the sanity of his actions.
"I scoured the Internet for information that would help
me understand what might lie ahead," he wrote, " While
shopping with Karen and the kids at the malls, I haunted
the bookstores and searched those shelves for information
on breast cancer and radiation therapy. Somewhere I hoped
to find the information that could beat this beast. I
couldn't rest until I found it.
"At home I denied those habits that ordinarily relaxed me
and distracted me from more ordinary concerns... My home
was no longer a safe haven from life's troubles. We were
never left alone. There was a stranger in my house that
followed me everywhere I went. He demanded my attention
and denied me any comfort. He hovered in every room,
reminding me constantly that I have a lot to worry about
and no time left to enjoy life... This stranger made me
doubt and dismiss every hopeful thought and concentrate
always on the worse."
He was unmoved by the fact that the cancer had been caught
very early and was "very treatable," counseled his wife,
who advised him further, "According to Dr. Pokorny, I do
not have any more cancer in my body. You just need to
relax and get over it."
"The blunt comment hit home like a slap on a hysterical
face," wrote Chris, "She was right. I was not doing her
any good by constantly dwelling on the subject. She was
the one with cancer and I was the one having all the
problems... But the caregiver and family members face
different challenges than the patient does, and in some
ways it is harder for the loved one than for the afflicted
one. When you are a patient, you have some control over
the situation... when you are the caregiver, there is very
little you can do or control. One is a participant; the
other a bystander. I believe that, in my situation, the
reluctance of hospital staff to allow me to take a role or
even to be with Karen led to my frustrated and rebellious
attitude. Of course I chose my own peculiar obsessions,
but they helped drive me to them by trivializing my role
to one of spectator."
Chris' obsessions continued, along with his wrath at the
medical professionals whose purpose seemed to be to hinder
his efforts at participating fully and actively in his
wife's treatment. His dissatisfaction was multiplied by
the fact that he would secure permission from the
physician to be present during a procedure, only to be
denied by technicians and nurses whose role was to protect
the facilities, perhaps arbitrary, as Chris saw it,
policies. It seemed unheard of, wrote Chris, that husbands
should want to participate in their wives treatment.
No voice of reasoning could break through Chris'
insistence to pursue his single-minded goal of conquering
the stranger. Even his own concerns about the baser needs
of his wife and children went unheeded as he plowed
forward with his purpose. His mother finally had enough
one day as he related his experiences with hospital
personnel and forcefully confronted him, saying, "Will you
stop it? Will you stop these pitiful obsessions of yours?
We all know how much you care for Karen and want to help
her, but this is NOT helping. Karen has enough oh her mind
without you putting on a scene in public... The constant
research, as if only you can save her; the unending
criticism of doctors, nurses, hospitals and anyone else
who tries to help her... just listen to yourself... You
want to show everyone how much you care; how much you've
learned about the subject; how devoted you are by
attending these treatments with Karen. You keep telling us
how rude they were to you; how misleading they were to
you; how offended you were. It's all about YOU."
She tempered her tirade to suggest counseling for his
"very real stress" while asking him to be stronger and
more supportive for Karen. "You cannot fix this; you
cannot make this thing go away. Have faith, like your wife
has faith; it will come out for the best," she finished.
As time went by, Chris did seek help with his obsessive
behavior, but he continued to encounter difficulties
attending treatments with Karen, despite efforts at
coordinating doctors' assurances with treatment
facilities' personnel.
He was able to more clearly illustrate his point when he
addressed a nurse who was determined not to allow him
inside the treatment room with Karen: "I see that you're
pregnant and I wish you the best of luck," he said, " Is
your husband going in with you when you deliver your
baby?"
"Yes, he is," she answered, to which Chris replied, "If at
the last minute they came to him and said he wasn't
allowed to go in with you, how would the two of you feel?"
The observation is a sound one. Over the last couple of
generations, hospitals have come to rely upon the extra
care and assistance provided by husbands in childbirth and
by parents following children's surgeries, recognizing the
one-on-one, familiar attention is as beneficial to the
patient as the assistance is helpful to short-staffed
facilities. Visiting hours have been relaxed for the same
reason, with family members allowed to stay with their
loved ones around the clock to provide care that otherwise
could not be nearly as efficient and supportive.
By the end of Chris' struggle, after he and Karen shopped
around and found a physician and facility that was able to
cater to and appreciate their needs, one is able to see
past the shrouds of his admitted obsession to see that
perhaps further evolution is needed to ensure family
members can participate as fully as possible in their
loved ones' most personal, insecure and frightening
moments. We are, after all, as adults sometimes as
vulnerable as when our mothers gripped our hands to make
the pain of an early injection less painful. We need the
same comfort and soothing words of immediate hugs and the
assurance that we have not been abandoned to these
strangers whose treatment, however compassionate, more
closely resembles torture.
Writes Chris, "We both needed each other, and needed to be
needed by each other. This became paramount to us, to
share the burden in order to help the other and alleviate
our own strain. I cannot imagine going through something
like this on your own. With God's help, we won't have to
again. Just remember that early detection is everything.
Don't gamble with your life because you're afraid of what
you might find. It is the unknown threat, the unnamed
stranger in your house, that produces the greatest fear."
Today, Chris says, "Karen is presently doing just great -
only because of early detection." Having recovered from
breast cancer, she underwent a complete hysterectomy
earlier this year due to the side effects of the breast
cancer drug tamoxifen, which Chris says caused her ovaries
to become the size of a baseball. "Now we don't have to
worry about ovarian, uterine or cervical cancers. What a
relief!" he says.
Chris has three pearls of wisdom gleaned from his and
Karen's experiences: "The first thing I learned about
cancer if that people do survive it," he says, having
overcome the fears his vocation caused him to dwell upon
initially, "Secondly, we learned just how important early
detection really is. We hear how important it is from our
doctors, TV, newspaper articles, etc., but until it hit
home and we had cancer it really didn't register. It is
one of the things people put off until it is too late.
"The third thing we learned is just how something like
cancer affects the entire family. Even though Karen was
the one with cancer the rest of the family was hurting
also. In my situation we wanted to fight this cancer
together... I heard from several people who agree that
some hospital procedures need to be changed to reflect the
needs of the patient and their family. Hospitals and
healthcare facilities need to understand the needs of
everyone who is responsible for the care of the patient.
As fast as people are dismissed from hospitals these days
after surgery, doesn't it make sense for them to involve
the caregivers at home more?"
During October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month,
Chris reminds readers, "Have you had your mammogram yet?"
Copies of A Stranger in Our House are available at
Internet outlets such as
www.BarnesandNoble.com, or directly from Chris.
Contact him and Karen at 812-256-6279.
|
|
