Borrowed Time

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Random reading. At first I thought it was because I was trying to delay becoming active again...you know, always on. Moving from one thing to the next without a breath in between. But I just read an article today that made me realize I've been searching. I've been trying to figure out the past year, what it means to me, what it means to my family and friends...what it means.

I guess what I've realized during this year of reading articles, blogs, stories of sadness, and stories of strength is that it doesn't really mean anything. I don't believe I was given lymphoma to test my strength or to open my eyes to how fragile life is. It wasn't to punish me for anything I've done in the past. When it comes down to it, I had a cell that had some molecular events happen at the wrong time in the wrong place.

I've told so many of my friends in the past that everything happens for a reason. They break up with their significant other: "Don't worry, everything happens for a reason." They don't get the job they thought they had in the bag: "Don't worry, everything happens for a reason." I've said it, probably too many times, but I don't believe it--at least not in the way it was meant.

I don't mean for this to come out sounding negative. I know it probably does. It's just that over the course of this year post treatment, I've realized that a lot of really bad shit happens to really good people. Seems obvious, right? It's not.

It's been interesting adjusting to a new way of thinking. Before cancer, I guess I felt invincible. As long as I ate my organic food, exercised, and treated others well, nothing bad would happen to me. I can honestly say I thought I'd live to 115. Now, I feel like I'm on borrowed time. I don't really like to think too far into the future. It's like I won't let myself go there.

In the future's place, I have the present instead. There is an example of this that sticks out very clearly in my mind. I went to a destination wedding back in October. My dad flew out to Virginia to stay with Zachary, and Jason and I flew down to the Bahamas for the wedding. During the reception, while we were all out on the dance floor, there was this moment. I'm not sure I'll be able to put it into words, but it was like life slowed down for a few seconds. Maybe it was the island air, or the dub step beat, or the positive energy of happy people around me, but it was like someone pressed the pause button, and I was frozen in time and space. After months of chemo hell, it was like I was trying to soak in everything good and beautiful around me. I was fully present, not thinking about anything else other than how good it felt to be there, alive, and truly happy.

Over the past year, I've had to come to terms with the fact that life doesn't always work out how you envisioned. While everything might not happen for a reason, we can still give it meaning--we can create a reason. I think it's a way to cope with the unexpected, to give our experiences a purpose.

I know I have a lot of thinking and rationalizing and searching ahead. There's no way around it when you go through something traumatic. It's a process, one I'm glad I get to do.

One Year Ago Today

This is a message I just sent to the doctor who diagnosed my lymphoma. I hope it brightens his day!

Hi Dr. Tompkins,

I have no clue if you remember me, or if this email is still active, but exactly one year ago to the day you delivered my diagnosis of Primary Mediastinal B-cell Lymphoma while I was sitting in a hospital bed being treated for a blood clot. I just wanted to say thank you for your quick actions getting the appropriate scans and biopsies before the lymphoma progressed any further. I finished my chemotherapy at the NIH back in June, and so far so good. I have a pesky area of uptake in my thymus in the PET scans, but my doctors are feeling comfortable that it's likely thymic rebound since I'm over six months out of treatment and nothing is growing.

I also wanted to thank you for your bedside manner. I have heard some true horror stories about how other patients' doctors told them they had cancer. I sincerely appreciate the compassionate way you told me and how you gave me a lot of hope by saying, "you have every reason to believe you're going to beat this." I really clung to those words throughout this whole ordeal.

If you get bored one day and want to see things from the patient's end, I blogged about my experiences atwww.mylymphomalog.blogspot.com. I haven't updated it recently, but I probably should soon. I've found the online social network of cancer survivors to be extremely helpful during treatment and after.

Well, thanks again for saving my life. Keep up the good work ;) 

All the best,

Shana

I know I need to update this...

I'm so sorry that I haven't been better about keeping everyone up to date with this blog. Life has been very busy the past few months--the good kind of busy.

In brief: my latest PET scan (this past Thursday) still showed abnormal spots in my thymus, but the CT scan looked clean. I'll have to repeat both the PET and CT scans in 8 weeks. As more time passes, the doctors feel more confident that the abnormalities in the PET scan do not represent residual lymphoma. So in this case, only time will tell...

My hope is to update this blog with everything that has happened since October. I have a lot to say about life post treatment and how it feels to be in a frequent scan cycle limbo. For now though, rest assured that we are all doing well and that, quite frankly, life couldn't be better.