In between rounds of chemo, I had 30 sessions of radiation.  Every weekday for 6 weeks, my mom and I drove 25 minutes to the clinic.  She sat in the waiting room while I walked down the hall and into a patient-only waiting room.

 Just off the patient waiting room were 3 unisex changing rooms.  Every day I got undressed from the waist up, put on a gown, and sat in the patient waiting room until one of the techs called me back to the treatment room.

It was in this waiting room that I met Dan, a 60-something-year-old man with pancreatic cancer.   He used to be the CEO of a company in Tennessee, but he retired a few years before and now taught economics at a community college.  Every time I saw him he was in a hospital gown, but he still had a very dignified presence.  He was tall, trim, and each of his gray hairs was always perfectly in place.

Whoever got to the waiting room first would change the TV channel from daytime soap operas to CNBC, and together we would watch the business reports. 

Sometimes we would talk about stocks; other times we would swap stories about our lives.  He told me about his job, his students, his wife and children and grandchildren.  And I told him about my job, my journalism studies, and my vacation plans.

One morning I’d been listening to Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us” just before I went to radiation.  While I was sitting in the waiting room, I kept hearing the song in my head…”If God had a name, what would it be?

              And would you call it to his face?

              If you were faced with Him in all his glory

              What would you ask if you had just one question?

I posed the question to Dan that afternoon.  “If you got to ask God one question, what would you ask him?”

Dan thought about it a minute, then answered, “I don’t know.”

“Would you ask God why?” I asked.  I think every cancer patient asks that question of God and themselves and the universe at some point in the process. Why me? Why this? Why now?  Why?

He shook his head vehemently.  “No, No, No.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” he began. “Because I don’t think there’s a good ‘why.’  Because even if I did know why, what would it matter?  What would it change?” 

He turned back to the stock reports as I contemplated his answer.  Of course he was right, technically.  But it didn’t change my longing to have an explanation for my suffering.

Every time someone met me for the first time and found out I had breast cancer, their next response was to cock their head, furrow their brow, and say, “But you’re so young…” 

I always nodded politely to these well-intentioned Masters of the Obvious, and tried not to let on how badly I wanted to be able to offer them (and me)  a satisfactory explanation. 

But there wasn’t one.  I hadn’t smoked, hadn’t drank, hadn’t eaten lots of red meat, hadn’t been overweight, hadn’t taken birth controls..I hadn’t even used ant-perspirant deodorant. 

The only explanation my oncologist could think of when I was first diagnosed was that maybe I had the BRCA gene that predisposes women to breast and ovarian cancer.  So he sent me to the Yale Cancer Center Genetic Counseling department for BRCA blood test.  A few weeks later, I returned to the Center with two friends to receive my results.  The genetic counselor came in, slid a paper across the table, and said aloud what I was reading on the report in front of me: “Negative for BRCA gene.” 

A few moments later, standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, my friends congratulated me and hugged me.  “That’s such good news!”  they exclaimed, then hurried back to work.  I stood there on the sidewalk long after they’d walked away.  It was good news, but it didn’t make me feel any better; it made me feel even more like a sitting duck.  If no one knew why I got the cancer, how could I prevent it from coming back? 

And, in fact, it did come back less than a year later.  Once again, I’m fighting this cancer.  And I’m still doing everything I can think of to stay healthy — eating well, taking vitamins, drinking green tea, exercising, and praying to God that the treatment works this time.  Because I don’t know if I’ll have what it takes to ever fight this hard again. 

Every day of this long journey, I wonder why.  But I’m beginning to wonder if Dan isn’t right.  Knowing why wouldn’t matter.  It wouldn’t change anything.  It wouldn’t fix anything. 

Besides, maybe I’m better off not knowing why than receiving an answer from God.  Part of me is afraid that if I raise my fist to heaven and demand an answer, I’ll hear a thundering, “Because I said so,” resounding from God in heaven.  And I may not ever want to speak to him again.