Cancer Has Made Us Lucky!

I am about to say something that some people might not understand – so I encourage you to read my whole post to see why I am saying it.

Cancer has made us lucky.   Yes lucky.

To tell you the truth it’s all we’ve ever known as a family.  Before I met my husband Chris he had already battled testicular cancer 3 times – and beat it.  Which is why we were over-joyed to find out we were pregnant with our son Miles.  You see Chris was told he would never have children – but if he did – it would take 6 years for his sperm count to return (we got pregnant with Miles 6 years and 2 months from his last treatment of high dose chemotherapy).  When Miles was just 3-weeks old we returned to Indiana University’s James Cancer Center for Chris’s annual check-up.  All went well – he was actually to the point where they considered him cured from testicular cancer.  They did his blood work, told us they would call if anything looked abnormal and sent out the door smiling with our newborn in-hand.  We were less than 20 minutes outside of Indianapolis when his cell phone rang – although the testicular cancer looked good – it turns out he now has Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia.  That day did not feel so lucky – but that is another story for another time.

I feel lucky that Chris’s cancer shapes our relationship – or at least it shapes my part in our relationship.  He’s not sick – in fact if you met him you’d probably never know.  Luckily – his type of Leukemia is treated with a pill – a little pill – an expensive pill – that he must take every day – for the rest of his life.  It’s also a new pill -on the market less than 6 years- so we have no long-term evidence/studies of how this pill will work through the years or how it will affect him.

Every morning when I wake up – I don’t know if I have 5 years, 15 years…or 50 years with him.  This makes EVERYTHING different.  You see, if I spent everyday dwelling & hypothesizing on this sobering thought – I’d be paralyzed.  I’d be unable to function.  The world would look gray. I love this man more than anything in the world and all I see is us growing old hand in hand.

Most people walk through life avoiding death – not wanting to talk about it – definitely not wanting to think about it – and I think that makes you appreciate life a little less.

Don’t be fooled – our relationship is not some utopian dream.  We still have arguments, we still get stressed out…but knowing that our time together may be limited makes it easier to recover from a fight, easier to cooperate with each other and easier to remember why we’re together.

My husband’s cancer has put life into perspective – it’s revealed what matters and what is really trivial. Before I met him I never fully embraced the “Don’t sweat the small stuff” attitude – but the book is right – it’s really all small stuff.

Here is my wish for you – don’t let the thought that you’ll be together forever or that there is always tomorrow prevent you from being your best today.

I wish that you don’t have to wait for something as unfortunate as cancer to make you appreciate life, sunshine, laughter…and making love. We are lucky – we are painfully aware of our mortality and have the time to do something about it, but tragedy strikes all the time without notice my friends – without time to reconcile – without time to say “I love you”.  So in the middle of your next argument, at the moment you think you’re so mad you want to sleep on the couch, when you cannot imagine any more stress in your life…ask yourself,

“If I knew my time was limited – would this matter? Would any of this matter.”