A friend recently recommended a romantic comedy to me named "Love and Other Drugs". I'm not exactly a fan of chick flicks/ romcoms, but it was moderately entertaining. Jake Gyllenhaal's character is a pharmaceutical sales rep (hence why my friend thought I'd like it- as that was one of my many careers too) who falls in love with Anne Hathaway's character- a young artist with Parkinson's disease.
Synopsis: Boy falls for girl despite her imminent debilitating illness, considers ditching her when having some insight to what the potential future of a wheelchair bound partner in adult nappies is explained to him, but of course (as happens in Hollywood movies) he decides he loves her too much, gives up his career and everything else for love. The end. Awww...
Anne Hathaway's character does, however, try to warn him many times that getting into a relationship with her would be fraught with complications due to her illness, and this knowledge changed the way she approached things. This got me thinking more about my own situation and possible future.
A few weeks ago I passed the one year mark from when I found out I had a cancerous tumour (See post "Beating the Big C"). Several months and two operations later, an initial screen suggested it hadn't grown back at that point. Although somewhat reassuring, it was also too early to really be able to draw any conclusions about "recovery" from that.
Now, another 6 months down the track, I have another screening coming up to see if the tumour is gone or has returned. This one will be a fairly good indication of whether or not I will be able to at least keep my uterus for a few years and therefore have a chance to have children. The alternative, if it has grown back, is have a hysterectomy, or don't, and let the cancer kill me.
None of these are particularly appealing options, and the other side of these considerations is what happens with any potential partners.
Even in the best case scenario, that the tumour doesn't regrow, I still carry a high risk Papilloma virus strain which caused it, which could potentially be transferred to a partner and cause penile cancer (although yes, the probability is incredibly low, do you know many men who would put their hand up for that one? In the words of Dennis Leary [although he was referring to cocaine] "Take my penis awaaay!"). This also means that, even though I may be fine for a few more years, it could always eventually grow back.
If I can't have children:
- I wouldn't want to deny anyone the opportunity to have children, if that's something they wanted, by being with me.
- Ironic as it may sound, I'm also not sure I would want to be with someone who didn't want children, even if I couldn't have them. Perhaps it's the presumed lack of empathy there would be in the relationship.
- Having had a mental illness, and how rare it is in Australia anyway, I will never be eligible to adopt.
If the cancer will develop and make me sick/ die:
- It would be downright deceptive to not tell someone what you know your future will hold, knowing how that would also affect them.
- How could you possibly expect anyone to sign up to a future with someone that will be short, unpleasant and/or full of illness? I would say its an incredibly selfish expectation, and possibly delusional to believe that you're so wonderful that your personality alone would make up for everything else.
It's all well and good for Hollywood movies to slather on the cheesy everything-will-be-fine and love-overcomes-everything storylines, but its hardly realistic. I know some people do manage to overcome some incredibly difficult situations/ illnesses, and accept each other exactly as they are, but [especially for those of us who most definitely do not look like Anne Hathaway] I would wager that 99.9% of potential partners would run in the opposite direction at top speed before you could finish the sentence "I'm a barren source of penis-cancer with a slow, painful death in my future".
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