The age-old thought process that “Everything Happens For A Reason”. Every accident, trauma, blip, process serves a greater purpose, a higher meaning. A Lesson. A Shift.
True or not true? Who knows? How do you know?
What if cancer happens and you just go on after like cancer didn’t happen. It’s a dream of many after having gone through surgeries that amputate a part of your body, chemo residue that changes the molecules of your interior and radiation that burns away not only at the cancer cells, but the good cells that become too exhausted to regenerate. During diagnosis and treatment you are just fighting to keep your head above water.
After treatment, when you are supposed to go back to normal, you have the luxury of time to look back and go – what in the ever loving hell? Which steps you back almost further than at diagnosis. Time is not your friend during this part. You and everyone else thinks, wow, you kicked cancer to the curb. You aren’t at the safety net of the surgery/radiology/oncology unit every other week for months on end. Be thankful. Be grateful. Modern medicine is the greatest.
Instead they set you adrift with a prescription and say take two and call me in six months.
The net just got a hole in it.
You take a full year to gather yourself up, cope with anything lingering, worry about new sensations and stare at a blank calendar.
Surely there has to be more.
A year passes by. 365 days after your last treatment/surgery is when you are supposed to find your new normal. This took more than 370 days for me and I was pretty pissed it wasn’t spot on.
It did happen, though. And I was finally (finally) able to piece together the rest of my life.
I was given this gift of time. I can’t waste it. What do I do to prove that I was worthy of receiving all that care, all those IV chemicals, the time I took from the surgeon to remove the cancer, all those dinners, all those movie tickets.
I sat on the couch for months wondering my worthiness. It led to a pretty dark hole. I wasn’t feeding the hungry (good grief, I wasn’t even feeding my husband), I wasn’t caring for orphans, I didn’t write a book (lots of words; no discernable order). I planted a Victory Garden 2020 (in the start of a Pandemic) and then let it go to seed and weed. I painted the bedroom, but the base molding is still at Home Depot.
I could not find my value.
In September, almost three years to the discovery of the first lump, I felt a second lump. Now my value really came into play. I had done nothing of note with my second chance.
On the day I learned the new lump was just scar tissue (fairly far from the scar, mind you, because that's fun), I learned I didn’t need to prove myself. To anyone. Mostly not to me.
It’s okay if I trudge along. It’s okay if I don’t get a PhD in Molecular Engineering. It’s okay if I am not the one feeding the hungry (my grown up husband can get his own damn food). I do not need to demonstrate (to anyone) that I am worthy for the price paid for having survived cancer.
