mortality

My sick coworker was admitted to the hospital yesterday when she went in for her pre-chemo preparations - she was supposed to start chemo today, but was running a fever when they examined her yesterday and they can't start until they're sure she isn't running an infection already. She's been out all week, at home, trying to rest, and I think having a lot of meetings with doctors and so forth. I am only getting information at second and third hand.

I realized today that I have been thinking about her almost as if she is already dead. I feel terrible for doing this. Although her cancer is clearly serious, and she has apparently been told it's "treatable but not curable," there are of course no guarantees that she will die of this, and if she does, when. But now my thoughts are not running, "X will do this until she comes back" but "X will do this when she's gone." I think maybe thinking of her as already gone makes the pain of thinking of her living with the stress and anxiety and pain of this illness, and the fear of her death and of what will happen to her family, her children, more bearable. I don't know.

Would I hightail it to Hawaii, rather than coming to work and acting as if everything was going to just go on as normally as possible, if I were diagnosed with "treatable but not curable" cancer? I do know, I damn well ought to have disability insurance. (I do have life insurance.)