Even my dreams have cancer...

I wrote the following passage last weekend, intending to publish it. I was in a dark place, frightened of what I faced in the immediate future even if I was still optimistic about my long-term future. I felt exhausted and overwhelmed and like I had been coping with the fact that I have cancer for my entire life.

I don't feel that way any more.

For one thing, I have now met with my surgeon and have a surgical date. I will have my surgery (don't read ahead, but I will have a separate blog post about that) in about two weeks. We have a solid plan and while the surgery will be significant I am confident that it is the right option for me.

I've also had more time to reflect, more time to write my thoughts and feelings and get them out of my head where the echo can be overwhelming (and yes, I know how it sounds). I've started publishing this blog. I've spent more time with people that matter and laughed with my family and friends.

I've gotten back to living a normal life, in other words.

The words you are about to read are honest. They represent the way I felt at one point in time. I think we all feel this way at times - like our whole lives have become about something that we can't really control. I thought about deleting these words and writing something more hopeful and positive. But it wouldn't be honest.

I don't feel this way any more, but I did feel this way.

So... if you ever find yourself feeling hopeless or helpless or that your life has become consumed with... well, you can fill in your own blanks, just take a deep breath and give yourself permission to feel that way honestly.

Life will get better. It did for me, and I know it can for you. 

***

January 25th.

It is one month since Christmas - a great Christmas, if I'm honest. A calm Christmas, a Christmas spent with family and friends, a Christmas that was more about love and togetherness than it was a trendy trinket or bauble.

It was also a Christmas without cancer. Was it really only a month ago?

I got my diagnosis ten days after Christmas, which means that I have officially only been living with my diagnosis for three weeks.

Three weeks? That can't be right.

I try distracting my mind with silly, pointless video games. I try reading. I engage in conversation with others, partly to stay connected with people and partly to try to live a normal life.

A life where I don't have a diagnosis of cancer.

The distractions don't really work. There are moments when I am playing video games that I forget I have cancer, but they are fleeting and insubstantial. I get lost in an intense passage in a book for a few moments, but then I turn the page and my mind snaps back to words like prognosis and radiotherapy. I revel in the art of conversation with people that matter to me, but the topic inevitably turns to what diagnostics I am getting done, what surgical options I'm faced with, and what my prognosis is.

See? That word crops up a lot. Prognosis is not a word a normal person should have to concern themselves with.

Surely there is some respite though, right? The sweet embrace of slumber? The land of Nod? Yes... yes, in dreams I will find relief.

Except I don't. Every dream I have had in the past three weeks has involved being told I have cancer, being treated for cancer, telling others that I have cancer. I wake up physically rested but emotionally exhausted from coping with words like prognosis all night long.

Three weeks. Just three weeks.

It feels like a lifetime.