Surviving Cancer

Being diagnosed in early 2005 with a fairly advanced stage of nasopharyngeal carcinoma was devastating, demoralizing and frightening beyond any degree ever experienced. Finally managing, after an understandable period, to crawl off the pity-pot, I became immersed in everything and anything I could locate concerning my type of cancer.

It was also then and there resolved to fight the cancer, as the Marine Corps had trained me to fight any adversary, with the tenacity of an extremely aggravated pit bull. Radiation and chemotherapy, as doctors tactfully warned treatment would be, was intense, aggressive and debilitating. The metastasized tumor was surgically removed and the primary tumor considerably reduced. But with 40 days of radiation over, chemo was doing more harm than good, and during my morbidity conference it was asked if I sought quality or quantity. There was absolutely no thought process needed for my immediate response: Quality!

Subsequently all treatment, except palliative care, was halted. It was during treatment, which nothing prior in life had prepared me for, when I came to realize that everything living on this planet is going to die. And we are the only living organism that denies, ignores, worries about and does our darnedest to prolong its inevitability, myself included. Neighbors were constantly subjected to my screaming tirades, unfortunately at any hour of the day or night; “cancer get out of my body, use any orifice you can find, just get out of my body!”

Nightly I would lie in bed mentally commanding every cell not necessary in keeping me alive to “drop what you’re doing and get up to the tumor and start killing cancer cells.” I’m confident there was nothing said, thought or imagined that was unique. I’m not going to claim to enjoy cancer or deny treatment if it will help eradicate what’s invaded my body. Neither will any attempt be made to bring anyone to believe I wasn’t immediately mentally and on a progressive scale physically trashed, or deny that to this day cancer does not occasionally permeate my thoughts.

There is a 7cc tumor that remains, (a doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering referred to it as the sleeping lion), deep in my sphenoid sinus which we’ve agreed to let sleep. It’s been two years since those gut wrenching, truly life altering words, “You have cancer” were heard.

I continue to live, knowing full well that the lion could awaken at any time. This August 2007, will mark the juncture in time when my doctors said I wasn’t expected to make it. However, I’m now aware that my time, that time, could be any time so I continue to live life until the time. It’s immensely easier on my mind, living life.