Happy 3rd cancerversary
Three years ago today, I went to the hospital with memory loss and ended up with a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. (The full run-down written on cancerversary #1, when I’d long been given a clean bill of health.)
My wife and I were chatting about this on the walk to work today, noting how natural it has become to celebrate the anniversary of something so nasty. We’ll go out tonight, toast each other, toast to some friends who supported us. But the celebration, as it were, is to recognize the dramatic before-and-after. July 16 is the watershed date. It’s when we knew how we would react as a family to crisis. It’s when we knew that our best friends would remain our best friends forever. So it’s a date worth celebrating.
We couldn’t have recognized it at the time, but now we know that an incident in 2007 gave us a comfort we can rely on the rest of our lives.
But boy will we need it. Back in January, my primary care physician, whom I will not be visiting again, told me it looked like I had developed a related cancer. His turned out to be incompetent doctoring (he ignored the fact that I had a cold sore during my bloodwork, which skewed all the numbers), but for the several days it took to clear up the misdiagnosis, we thought we were heading down that same road again. And worse, the realization that it could recur meant…it could recur, again and again. I was no longer cancer’s asskicker. I was another guy subject to the whim of the universe and the talents (or lack thereof) of doctors.
Amazingly, that put life into perspective much more than the original diagnosis did. While the first diagnosis taught us we truly could handle anything and we had the people around us we needed, the second (mis)diagnosis taught us, a little more darkly, to avoid needing to handle anything, to stay healthy, and to treasure the people around us.
The first diagnosis showed us life is nuts. The second, that life is short.
So on this third cancerversary, I want to highlight the things we’re loving in our short lives. We love that we’ll see our families next week and in October, after this month having seen my wife’s family two weekends in a row. We love that we have this ridiculous dog:
We love that we’re taking our involvement in our communities–particularly cancer charities and friends affected by cancer–a little more seriously. We love reading, maybe more than ever now. We love our dreams–from finding the right house to raise kids in to finding a Saturday to go to Curtis’ Bar-B-Q in Putney, Vermont. We love that my dear friend Patrick, whose first wedding anniversary is in two days, is now a proud father.
These things, they’re not anything that a little worry about illness can ever get in the way of.
