My Cancerversary

Three years ago this week I was diagnosed with cancer. It's kind of funny because I didn't even remember this year. Adam reminded me on Tuesday it was my three year cancerversary. At that time, when I was first diagnosed, I couldn't imagine a time when I wouldn't think about having cancer every minute of every day. I knew it would come eventually, the time when my life didn't revolve around having cancer, but I couldn't picture when or how I would get there. Cancer was the first thought in my mind when I woke up in the morning and the last before I went to bed. Cancer colored my whole world for at least six months until I gradually started to feel "normal" again. Now I hardly think about it at all. Sure I still have moments when I resent having this extra thing to worry about whenever I have to go back for more bloodwork or remember to take my thyroid hormone every morning. But mostly it's a non-issue in my life these days. And I still believe - even more so as I get more hindsight - what I said before: having cancer was a blessing in disguise. Not least because it made me more aware of how precious life is and what is really important. I know that sounds cliche, but when you are confronted with your own mortality, it brings everything into sharp focus. I've lost some of that focus now that I know I'm going to go on living for quite some time, so it's nice to remember every year what it felt like then. To be alive.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e. e. cummings