![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/70759194_4d7bffef9d_m.jpg\")
I can look to people who suffer for answers. It is not hard to find written first-person narratives of suffering. In these narratives, protagonists are often cast in two roles: the suffering fighter and the wise sufferer.<\/p>\n
As Kathlyn Conway discusses in her essay, “The Cultural Story of Triumph<\/a>\u201d, the narrative of a “suffering” fighter dominates over other stories of illness. Illness becomes a journey to physical cure. Where physical cure is not possible, illness is cast as a path to wisdom, a form of moral development. The patient becomes a traveler who should somehow be \u201cuncomplaining, strong, and brave\u201d on this journey (Conway, 2007).<\/p>\n \u201cIllness is a chance to show us your guns and triumph!\u201d the medical culture seems to say.<\/p>\n If society expects sick people to be \u201cfighters\u201d what else do we expect from them? I think of S, a 62-year old woman with osteosarcoma, who put on lipstick while her skin was sinking deeper into the spaces between her bones. \u201cCan’t let this cancer make me ugly honey,\u201d she said as she applied her makeup in the mirror. What does it mean that S\u2019s fight against cancer involved cosmetic routines?<\/p>\n The idea that people grow in strength or wisdom while suffering is familiar to me. As essayist, Pico Iyer describes in \u201cT<\/a>he Value of Suffering<\/a>\u201d, suffering can be a doorway to compassion, loss can be an invitation to appreciate nuance. Yet, my intestines tangle when I imagine telling a patient who suffers, \u201cWhat an opportunity to unfurl in wisdom!\u201d Even if I did not say this out loud, I wonder what my expectations might communicate.<\/p>\n
![\"Untitled](\"https:\/\/www.themspress.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Untitled-2-copy.jpg\")
<\/a>Last year, my close friend J died of metastatic breast cancer while 27 weeks pregnant with a boy. During her first trimester, we would lie on my floor and look up at the ceiling when retching woke her in the morning. Over the next few months we went to her prenatal visits and giggled over possible baby names. Then, she stopped eating and her nails turned yellow. Her doctor said, \u201cHopefully it\u2019s hepatitis.\u201d He didn\u2019t bother to tell us what it hopefully wasn\u2019t. Her yellow vomit and \u201cliver nodules\u201d explained. She was 24 years old when she passed away and left behind her husband and 3-year old son.<\/p>\n