Life's Switchbacks

I experienced driving on my first switchback when I was a very young child and my family spent the day in the nearby Zion National Park. Going to the park always included a drive through the Zion-Mt Carmel Tunnel. This tunnel holds a special meaning to my family, because my father helped build it when he was a teenager. Upon its completion in 1930, the 1.1 mile long tunnel was the longest tunnel of its type in the United States and was considered an engineering marvel of its time.

Unfortunately, to enter the tunnel from the Westside, you have to drive through a series of switchbacks, a zigzag road arranged for climbing the steep grade. I recall the hairpin turns as we drove up the road, the upper road looping very closely at times to the road we had driven on below.

I have been thinking of those switchbacks in Zion National Park lately, because I feel like the road of life can also contain switchbacks. A hairpin turn symbolizing a trial and the road below symbolizing one’s past.

The current “life’s switchback” I am experiencing is my husband’s fight with cancer, reminding me of my Grandmother Florence Shamo’s fight with tuberculosis. Her road seems so very close to mine right now--I can almost feel her presence. Let me explain the similarity. I’ll begin by telling you of the unforeseen hairpin turn the road in her life took; here is her story.

One harsh winter day in Mandan North Dakota, Florence was bringing her horses home from town when a blizzard hit. The storm caught her by surprise and she soon found herself surrounded by a white-out, where the snow was so thick she couldn’t find her way home. She stood in the raging storm while holding desperately onto the horses until the blizzard passed. At twenty-six years of age, she had grown up quickly, marrying her sweetheart at the age of sixteen and having four beautiful children within a short period of time. So when her exposure from the cold developed into the racking cough of consumption, her devoted husband did all that he could to save her. The doctor felt her only hope was to move to the sunny dry climate of Arizona. Unfortunately her beautiful frail body couldn’t handle the long journey. Upon reaching Hurricane, Utah with her husband and young family, she could travel no further. She succumbed to Tuberculosis in 1918, while only twenty-eight years old. A mere three years later, an effective treatment was dicovered for this horrible disease.

I am now leaving the hairpin turn of my Grandmother’s experience behind and am moving on to my own. In September, 2009, my husband Burke was diagnosed with Bladder Cancer. The current most successful treatment for this type of cancer is Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). BCG is also used in some countries as a vaccine to provide protection against tuberculosis (TB). Here is the clincher: my husband is being treated at Stanford Cancer Center with the same medicine that could have saved my Grandmother Florence’s life.

I wish it could have been different for my Grandmother. I have hopes it will be different for my husband. As I look at this “life’s switchback”, I am grateful to live during a time where technology exists to cure diseases which killed people just a generation ago. Seeing that a cure was found for Tuberculosis gives me hope a cure for cancer can also be found.

Burke goes in for his biopsy surgery tomorrow to see if the fourteen weeks of BCG Treatment was successful. Of course, prayers, good wishes, chants, coins in the fountain, etc. are welcome!

Have you ever experienced “life’s switchbacks’? I would love to hear if you have!