We were talking in the Stem Cell Clinic waiting room. Suddenly I realized I can not imagine my life ever again without cancer. I also realized how it has begun to shape my life morphing so to speak into the new life. I have no idea when that happened. Well I guess I do. It was when I busted my back and also found out I had cancer. Everything changed then. But I still had this notion of denial , that everything would go back to the way things had been. What I suddenly felt in that waiting room that day was this: I, along with all the other patients in this room have CANCER and will have CANCER in some form or another for the rest of our lives.
The above was the beginning of a post that I had worked on in October of last year. I guess I have become accustomed to this new modality. So my condition is that I don't have cancer, that's correct, that's straight from the Doctor's notes and his mouth. So am I a cancer patient then or not? Lynne said that it's in remission. I thought that Dr. Khouri said all the cancer cells are gone, so maybe I'm a transplant patient. She said that the better word was cancer survivor. That works for me.
Nevertheless I am irreversibly changed forever. It has been the focus of this blog for a year and a half. It is the thought on every body's mind when they ask about me. So what I am challenged to do now is wrestle with what that means to me. That should keep going for a few years and thankfully, those I do have.
You'll notice that oncologists rarely use the word "cure". There's a reason for that.
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