around this time last year, i was finishing up my last chemo session (of 6 total), i was months past the big surgery, i was careening into remission. i was hopeful, tentatively hopeful, and looking forward to my hair growing back, to regaining 100% energy, to start living forward after having been more than completely knocked down, out of order, for months of life-changing experiences. tentatively hopeful.
i didn't of course know then that my dad would be diagnosed with lymphoma two months later. or that his body wouldn't be strong enough for treatment, and he'd die 4 months after that. or that a month after that the entire world would change, with COVID-19. an another month would bring me to a recurrence of my cancer. who can know that stuff?
no one, right? and yet, people always say, "live today like there is no tomorrow." i get what it means and yet every time i hear it or see on a cross-stitch or wall-hanging, i think it's one of the dumbest and most hollow things i've ever read.
even some cancery people say it, as in: "i will not let this disease steal my joy!" i truly believe that they believe it. but i don't know what it means. my feeling is: lady, this disease has stolen your joy whether you build a little wall of words around you or not.
remember the day you were diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer? remember your first chemo session and all the chemo sessions after that? also, remember that time you had to go into the hospital so a surgeon could make a foot-long vertical incision down your abdomen to get the cancer out, and you didn't know exactly how many organs you'd wake up without? (yeah, that's a bit overkill, i know).
believe it or not, your joy from those days and from that period of time has been stolen. can you imagine what would you have been doing instead on those days? i can. maybe that's why i'm the grumpy, disgruntled, still-angry cancer patient who knows she will have no peace of mind until she accepts what is happening, but still can't seem to accept what is happening.
maybe i'm the unenlightened one. i'm the one can't let this insidiousness sway me into believing that i actually get a say in the outcome. i wish those people could tell me -- in concrete, tangible ways -- how exactly they do not let this disease steal their joy. is it some mind game? an olympian-level compartmentalizing ability?
they live each day like there is no tomorrow while their minds are able to eclipse the fact of the cancer? or is it that they can at least keep up the charade until it's time to go to the hospital again for their next treatment? i sound snarky but i am genuinely asking. i would honestly love to know how to pull it off.
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