Eleven Days and Counting
Eleven days. Eleven days until they remove my chemotherapy port, reverse this horrible bag, and I find out what my new normal looks like. All of that is contingent on my doctors telling me this Wednesday that my internal surgical connections have healed well enough to allow for the reversal. Waste can’t pass over incision points that are still healing — and if that goes wrong, it likely ends in something bad. Something that ends in death. That is definitely not the way I want to go out. Not after all the shit — yup, still doing colon cancer puns — I’ve already been through this past year.
It’s somehow hard to believe it’s already been a year since all this started, but it has. Given how far along the cancer was, I think I ended up lucky, and because of that I keep coming back to the same question: now what? I don’t think God gave me this second chance just to return to exactly what life looked like before all this. At least I sure hope not.
I don’t have the answer yet, and I’m not in a rush to do something rash. I’m not about to quit my job, sell everything, and buy a small boat to sail around the world with Tugboat. I don’t know how to sail. I get seasick easily. Lattes are hard to come by in the middle of the ocean, and dying at sea honestly feels like a fate almost worse than dying of cancer. So — no rash decisions. But things do need to change, and more than almost anything else right now, I find myself asking God to show me what that change needs to look like. For now I just don’t know, so I can’t say — I’ll have to keep you posted as it becomes clearer. I can be pretty dense sometimes, so it might take longer than it should. I hope not, but who knows.
That said, sitting with this question as long as I have has led me to a couple of realizations — some from my own reflection, some probably from people much smarter than me who said something that stuck, though I can’t remember who or when to give them proper credit.
The first is that I need to focus on the moment. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I spend so much time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future that I completely miss what’s actually happening right now — and that’s just plain stupid. For the most part, I can’t control what’s coming, and I sure as hell can’t change what’s already happened. So why wouldn’t I just enjoy what’s going on in the moment and let the rest happen as it will? It’s a lot easier to say than to do, but it’s a work in progress. If that sounds like a good way to live to you, maybe give it a try.
The second is this: when you are in the moment, all the best things live on the other side of uncomfortable or embarrassing. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory, but in case it isn’t — embarrassment and discomfort seem to be the main blockers standing between most people and the really good stuff in life. I have no idea why anyone would run away from that instead of straight through it. I’m guilty of it all the time. But I’m done letting embarrassment hold me back. I’m going to seek out discomfort and see what’s waiting on the other side. At the very least, if it all goes sideways, it should make for great stories here.
Stay tuned — who knows what might happen.
For now, it’s bedtime. It’s 11pm, Tugboat is already in bed, and tomorrow is an interesting new adventure. See you soon.