Embracing Cancer—Embracing Life

Gratitude. Each morning before I step into the blue Pacific to begin my exercise routine, I stop at the water’s edge, letting the gentle waves wash over my feet and ankles. I stand motionless for a few moments, thanking life’s never ending consciousness for bringing me through another night and for providing me with these extra moments; moments I know can end at any instant. I peer out past the coconut trees and the rocky reef to the horizon beyond and think of all the wonderful people who have helped me realize these extra moments. I visualize each of my children, siblings and grandchildren in my mind and send out my cosmic love to each of them. I notice the dark, lava rocks that makes up the reef, and the coconut trees whose leaves shimmer in the morning breezes. I watch as the waves crash against the reef sending a spray of white foam high into the air, creating, for but an instant, a rainbow, that disappears as the spray falls back to the sea. I look down at my feet and watch the water approach and cover them, feeling it flowing around and past me. Many days I’m overcome with emotion as I think about the many wondrous events that have taken place since my diagnosis. The very same daily events that I mostly overlooked before I was diagnosed have taken on new meaning now. Wherever you are, be it at the ocean, in the mountains, a high-rise apartment in a large city or suburb of a small town, the value found in each of your days doesn’t change. Once you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, every day becomes special, regardless of where you are. I’ve spent days and weeks in hospital rooms on both coasts and in the middle of the Pacific and I’ve discovered the miracle in each of those days. You’ll find it too as you come to recognize the fragility of life and the joy that comes from meeting another day. Perhaps you’ll first find it while lying in a hospital bed or sitting in an easy chair, receiving chemo at your outpatient oncology department, or as you lay on a gurney preparing to enter the operating room, but find it you must and find it you will. Gratitude for your life - lived, living and yet to be lived - will overwhelm you in the most remarkable way imaginable. When it does, you will be forever changed. At that moment you will understand that love, in its many nuances and facets, is more important than anything else in the world. Love and connection will soon become your most valuable assets. Another reason I implore you to embrace your cancer and embrace your life. Cancer can improve your relationships. How many of us let issues of little or no real consequence affect our relationships with family and friends? When we’re healthy and life will seemingly go on forever, these trivial matters seem so important as to eclipse everything else, genetics or friendships be damned. Yet, when stricken with cancer, I found that relationships I thought were damaged beyond repair, suddenly become very important to mend, for everyone involved. I found that to be the case again and again, you may too. Never again will you view a relationship as meaningless or unworthy of the effort to save, for relationships are all we will ever possess that have real intrinsic value. The love that permeates these relationships is all we will want to hold close as we take life’s final breaths. Let me share with you a story that illustrates the importance of relationships in our life. It was the 19th of November, 2012, when Bobbie and I, along with some our children and grandchildren, gathered together to await the arrival of our daughter’s first child, a beautiful baby girl. We had rented a house, large enough to accommodate the group that was assembled there for both the much anticipated birth and Thanksgiving the following week. As the evening grew late, nearly everyone had wandered off to various bedrooms for some much needed sleep, with the exception of our youngest son, James, Bobbie, and me. We stood around the island in the center of the kitchen, talking quietly, sipping wine, when I suddenly began to feel this rising pain. Having been diagnosed with cancer three years before, which had given rise to hundreds of tumors throughout my digestive tract, as well as, undergoing abdominal surgery for a blocked small intestine eighteen months earlier, I was quite accustomed to pain of varying degrees. So, without saying anything to the others, I turned away from the island, twisting my body as I did. Instantly, I was doubled over in the most horrific pain I have ever experienced. So intense was the pain that I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. Searing pain, centered under my rib cage on the right side, radiated down my right leg and up through my chest and into my shoulder. My agony increased dramatically as the seconds passed and finally it occurred to me that I was dying; the predictions made by my surgeon eighteen months earlier were now coming to fruition. Bobbie and James took hold of me and eased me to the sofa where I remained doubled over, unable to move, breathe, or speak. Bobbie held tightly to my knee as James stepped to the phone and dialed 911. Struggling, I managed to suck in just enough air to stay conscious. I haltingly croaked out to them the only thoughts that mattered to me at that moment, “I love you,” I said, through gritted teeth, “Tell everyone I love them.” I wasn’t thinking about my bank account, my new car, or how much I would miss seeing the Super Bowl. Nor did I think about some misunderstanding my siblings and I had had years earlier or any number of other disagreements I may have had with a friend or family member. No. Feeling certain that death was at hand, there was but one thing paramount to me…making sure everyone knew I loved them. It was important that each was aware that my last conscious thoughts were of them. This is the reality of a joyful life. No regrets, no disappointments, just love.