(Therapeutic) blogging at lunchtime

Posted on May 9, 2007
Filed Under All, My Brain |

I rarely blog from work, even during breaks and lunch. Given my schedule and the amount of time that gets sucked into public transport, dealing with fatigue et al., I try to work straight through on Adobe office days, lunch hour included.

However this morning, sweet spouse Linda, sensing I was a bit down, gave me an article from the NYT about the ‘Why Me?’ struggle. The article is written by a health writer and breast cancer patient who was at very low risk for the disease, and can’t get her arms around the fact that she contracted the disease anyway until she bumps into a fellow cancer patient facing a worse disease than her own.

How do you do it?” I asked her. “How do you live each day with cancer hanging over your head?”

She smiled, understanding. “I treat every day as an adventure, and I refuse to let anything make me sad, angry or worried,” she replied. “I live for the day, which is something I never did before. Believe it or not, I’m happier now than I was before I was diagnosed.”

She wasn’t spending her time tracking down studies and agonizing over statistics. She wasn’t sitting with her head in her hands, asking why, why, why. No, she didn’t know why she got cancer, but she realized that nothing would be different even if she did.

I thought about her for days. Gradually I began to understand. The only answer to the question “Why me?” is this: Because bad stuff happens to everyone, and this is what happened to me. One of my closest friends struggled with infertility. That’s her short straw. Another friend’s marriage fell apart. Another friend gave birth to a stillborn child. Look closely enough and you’ll see that everyone has a short straw or two in their lives.

I’ll never know why I got cancer. What I do know is that the sooner I let go of the need to find something or someone to blame, the sooner I’ll be able to put cancer behind me and enjoy life, however long or short it may be. Only when I accept the sometimes cruel randomness of fate will I be able to call myself a survivor.

Great attitude: cancer, if you get it, is what it is, and whatever else that’s bad and that falls out of it. You just have to make your way, one day at a time….

Comments

One Response to “(Therapeutic) blogging at lunchtime”

  1. Stuart on May 14th, 2007 3:00 pm

    Chris- I like that article. I can also show you many that show improvements in cancer survival by keeping a good attitude. You are on the right track.Have a nice trip to Europe. Best Stuart Rosenberg

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