Tag Archives: emphysema

So it will be awhile before I learn of Mom’s official diagnosis. I predict colon cancer. I hope I’m wrong about that.

But if it does turn out to be cancer, there will be such irony.

For years, before Dad got dementia, I worried about every time his cough worsened, or he had some vague pain somewhere. A smoker since he was 16, I was certain cancer would get him in the end. He was diagnosed with COPD and emphysema, a result of that smoking habit. But somehow, he dodged the cancer bullet. Of course, one could argue that dementia is the worse fate.

Yet my mom, who’s practically a vegetarian, who doesn’t drink and who smoked rarely for only a very brief period when it was trendy for women to do so, she may be the one who cancer nabs. Life truly is a crapshoot. I still believe that it’s better to play the odds and try to live a reasonably healthy lifestyle, but there are no guarantees that clean living will spare you from terrible diseases.

And if my Mom is diagnosed with a benign condition that can be corrected, it’s still a good wake-up call. Make good use of the time you have. We’re all borrowers when it comes to time left on this earth.