Living each day

About a year ago, I read something by a woman that affected me deeply. Her husband had been diagnosed with cancer and was pursuing treatment. I don't remember now what the cancer stage was, but the treatment was both onerous and routine. She virtually held her breath as they went through it; they put their lives on hold until the treatment was done. But something went wrong. I don't recall whether it was a surgery with unexpected complications or one of the countless toxic side effects of chemo. Whatever it was, he died suddenly. And she had very little memory of the past few months, the months of cancer treatment, the months they'd not been actively engaging as they just tried to get through it.

Sandy and I talked about that, grateful that we were engaged with each other and with life as she had chemo. We knew that we'd been "holding our breath" in May and June of 2010, and we were both so glad to have gotten through that time and into a phase where cancer was part of our lives but not all-consuming. We resolved not to let go of that, not to just mark time with the hope of getting to better days. Not to sacrifice life to treatment.

One side effect of Sandy's initial cancer treatment was her
addiction to sudoku. She'd never been much for puzzles,
but one day at chemo, she grabbed the puzzle page of the newspaper
from me and said, "I guess I'd better figure out how to do this."
I had to buy her sudoku books regularly over the last four years -
she kept a little one with her at all times, in her backpack and in
her bike pannier, just in case she had to wait somewhere
for a minute and didn't have something to read.

I feel good about our keeping that promise to ourselves. Even on days that she had a lot of pain, Sandy was engaged in the world, interacting with friends, and working on projects. And though it became tough to balance, especially during the challenging time that she was in the hospital and at home for hospice, our relationship was about much more than caregiving and routine tasks.

When she had her first cancer treatment in 2006, we very much saw treatment as something to endure so we could resume our lives. I put many things in my life on hold so that she could continue grad school and spend time with friends and live. But I don't think I ever shut down or gave in to cancer completely. And if I could go back in time, I'd have made that a higher priority.

I think the first and best advice I'd give to anyone dealing with any stage of cancer: Don't let the cancer erase everything else. Don't stop living while you go through treatment. Don't put off the love you can share each day.

That's probably good advice for life in general, whether the thing that threatens to erase other aspects of your life is illness or work or family stress. We each get to decide what defines us, ultimately, and how we integrate challenges into our lives. Even when it feels like all choice has been taken from us.