Survivor Guilt

I once worked with a fel­low with whom I had some inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions about what it feels like to sur­vive when oth­ers did not. These dis­cus­sions started when he found out that I was a sur­vivor of lym­phoma. Turns out he had sur­vived Guillain-Barré syn­drome. Guillain-Barré syn­drome has been observed to occur more fre­quently in sur­vivors of lym­phoma, so we had cause to dis­cuss sur­vivor­ship. This co-worker was also a vet­eran of the US Army who had been wounded in action. Under fire of a sniper, he was wounded while the sol­dier imme­di­ately next to him was killed.

On sev­eral occa­sions we dis­cussed the feel­ing of sur­viv­ing when some­one right next to you did not. When I started my radi­a­tion treat­ments there were sev­eral peo­ple who also started treat­ment who did not share my out­come. Within just a cou­ple of years of my lym­phoma, a very sweet and dear niece suc­cumbed to leukemia. As my co-worker always said, “You can­not ask why not me or it will drive you to mad­ness.” But we obvi­ously were both occa­sion­ally wondering.

I think there is only one answer to the ques­tion, “Why not me?” That answer is, “Because it wasn’t.” The only alter­na­tive is to wal­low in guilt and waste the oppor­tu­nity of sur­vivor­ship. But every once in a while, I do wonder …

Is Still Here