Let it go
#fiveyearsurvivor
How does one explain the inexplicable or summarise the immeasurable? One can't. I can't.
Five years ago I was told I might not live for much longer. Undeniably, that was one of the worst days of my life. Up there in the same league as loosing my parents. But, it had less finality to it though... I wasn't dead yet.
I embarked on a journey that can't quite be explained in every dimension. Of course one can talk about the horrors of treatments and the shenanigans of hospital life, but the raw and honest truth about the toll on one's inner self, is harder. Because after a while no one wants to know. That is the truth. Life is hard enough for all. There is only so much cancer this that and the other, that people including myself, can stomach. Cancer fatigue sets in.
I spend most days not thinking cancer. I spend most days not talking cancer. I spend most days not living with cancer tattooed on my forehead. I don't want to be that person that people avoid talking to in fear of that the subject comes up. To be the killer of any social gathering where the mood bomb #cancer is dropped for a sympathy vote.
I just want to be me. But it's a constant juggle. Because Cancer is a part of my life. A part I can't just erase. I live with the scars everyday of my life. I live with the side effects of operations and medications everyday of my life, for the rest of my life. But I do so proudly. Because I survived.
So true to say is that it is not possible in words to summarise what is immeasurable. To feel like a survivor is immeasurable.
That can also be an example of inexplicable things. To survive. The fact that I didn't die. Just yet anyway. I mean, it was and is a lottery of life. I had an aggressive quite advanced cancer. One of the ladies that was operated the same day as myself, shared hospital ward with and whom I stayed in contact with, had a less aggressive type and with no spreading. Judy died last summer.
I know of countless others. Gone. But there are also countless more like me. Here.
So there is little point in trying to understand. Little point in fearing. Why fear the unbeknownst? The certainty is there staring us all in the face. Like Dr Diffley said on that fateful day to my query if I was a gonner, "We are all going to die"... Sooner for some and later for others.
I have been given a gift. I have had five years of life where there would have been none. Sometimes, it comes back to me as an unbelievable but true story. The fact that I nearly died. The fact that I went through a year of hell and suffering.The fact that it might come back. The fact that no one knows what tomorrow will bring. But most of the time I put those thoughts to sleep and I let it go.
Soundtrack
James Bay, Let it go
https://open.spotify.com/track/40EB7ABUO6MoWMUwPKptJ7