Prelude to a Cancer Stroy

If someone were to ask me to summarize the past four months of my life in just a few words, I would tell them that is a stupid request and they should shut-up. There were too many emotions to be summarized in a tidy little package, and I have never been good at condensing long stories so that people could save time by not listening to, or reading all the details. I prefer the idea of laying it all out there, and I think for my own sake I need to do it like that because everything happened so fast I never really had a chance to wrap my head around the enormity of it all.

Such is time. It goes by without delay or trepidation. It doesn't slow down to make sure you're keeping up, and it certainly doesn't stop to wait for you. In fact, when you wish time wouldn't go so fast, that's when it starts lapping you.

So now that I've been able to reclaim a bit of normalcy and routine back into my days I feel like it's time to start confronting the emotions I've openly expressed, and the feelings I know are in there but never emerged while I was sick. By releasing my mind through written words I hope to come to grips with how my life is forever changed. I know I am, and am not, the same person I was before, but after everything that has happened I feel as though I am beyond vulnerable and ready to confront the reality of my second chance.

Throughout the course of my treatment the last thing I ever wanted is pity. I never wanted the deep pathos that comes with being told you may have a terminal illness. But I think it's natural for people to react that way, and when it comes to cancer they automatically feel sorry for you. It allows humans to show they care and that they're concerned about someone else's well-being, and I'll admit that when I felt like death warmed over it was good to know people were out there feeling sorry for me. It made me feel like a fighter--like a survivor. Besides, how else is someone supposed to react when getting the news that their friend, brother, son, husband, or now father, is facing something as ominous as the 'C' word. There's no best way to react, and so we do what comes naturally--we cry, we worry, we wonder, we might even start to pray again. Regardless of what we do, we do it based on who we are.

In writing about my experiences I don't want people to revisit those feelings for me again. All of this is meant to be an experiment, an exploration, a sincere reflection on what has happened and what might happen next. It's hard to say whether or not any of this is going to come out of me in chronological order, but it should be relatively easy to identify where you are along the timeline.

Here goes nothing...