A PROGNOSIS IS NOT WRITTEN IN STONE

I mentioned that I’ve had new thoughts about my cancer and just when it invaded my body. When the tumors in my lungs showed up in an x-ray on April 14, 2007 it seemed sudden and out of the blue. Yet I know that metastasized cancer does not occur overnight and I began trying to reconstruct all my discomfort and fatigue and visits to various doctors with vague symptoms, trying in vain to discover why, if I was so healthy, I felt so bad all the time. I’d been dealing with Lupus for a number of years and some of the symptoms of cancer and Lupus overlap, especially that of fatigue. But the escalating breathing problems and more and more difficulty walking and standing with back pain were not as easily dismissed because of Lupus. My primary care physician sent me to a heart specialist and a Pulmonologist, sent me for Doppler's for edema and vein constriction, routine blood tests, and periodic chest x-rays. Nothing showed up as abnormal. I can’t be precise, but the best time line I can come up with is that all these nagging symptoms and the inner knowledge that something was seriously wrong with me had been going on for at least 4 years...possibly longer. So this parasitic demon had been working alive in my body for years before it became large enough to finally see on film. I still looked the picture of health.

The oncologist told me on my first visit that by the extent of the spread all over my body I could expect to have somewhat less than a year to live. “A few months,” he said. I’ve lived with the knowledge of the full extent of the illness for two months now and just this past two weeks I have begun to think that unless the growth of the tumors increases dramatically, I might actually have 2 or 3 more years to live. I’m not praying for that or trying to make pacts or bargains, but it just seems that if it continues at the slow pace it’s taken in the past, it would naturally continue at a slow pace.

I would welcome two or three years instead of less than one, but only because I am still enjoying life. I am definitely more limited because of my back and fatigue and mostly prefer to stay at home where I am more comfortable, but as long as I can still enjoy my friends, get out for dinner occasionally, have fun writing and enjoying a bit of a social life, then I would like to have a little more time. I still laugh each and every day, and see humor in most everything. When the quality of my life has gone and I stop laughing and if I become bedfast or dependent on morphine and oxygen for my daily breath, then I will be ready for the next step.

I wonder how many of us are out there in the world walking around with a deadly disease that no one can find even when we’re beating the bushes in search of answers because we know something is dreadfully wrong? The frustration of that part of cancer is deadly in and of itself. The frustration can lead to an almost unbearable anger when no one is able to find what is right in front of their eyes because you know it didn’t have to get this bad and it meant life or death to me.

Or did it? Then my thoughts take me to predestination and the fact that it seems that by some preordained plan I am meant to die this year or the next. I either had a myriad of the lousiest doctors on the face of the earth or the gods decided before hand when my number would be up on a date certain. Is it that simple? When we are born are we given X number of years to live and then we must transit onto the next plane of existence?

I don’t drag my frustration forward with me. The doctors are all mere humans and I honestly believe they did all they knew to do. Nor do I dwell on what ifs or if onlys or anger. I focus on only today and this moment...what I am doing and feeling right this second. No matter how much time I have left, I now know that there are only a finite number of moments left to any of us and I intend to use mine for only the good things that come my way. Thankfully I have a million good moments to cherish and enjoy each day and I’m going to soak them all up to the finish line.