Today is my own personal D-Day. Diagnosis Day. Seventeen years ago, my assault on the enemy began with three words, “You have cancer.” I was sucked into the vortex I call Cancerland without any training for the battle. Storming the beach without any knowledge of what to do if I made it to the shore. How does one take out an enemy so big when one is so tiny? An enemy that has drawn a target on your body and has committed to remove you from this earth? I was terrified. But sometimes you have to fight terrified. Sometimes you have to enter battle unsure. I think every cancer patient does so.

I did my best to sit in that chemo chair with a stiff upper lip. I was not always successful. Meltdowns were as much a part of my journey as any fighting. I didn’t feel like a great warrior, more like a tiny scared mouse. Running from appointment to appointment, hoping there were no bombs to take me out. Never sure if the next step would be my last, or if I would survive the next surgery. Now that I have survived, people say I am a warrior, but the thing is, warriors are just people.

I look around for my comrades, the ones I met along the way. Most of them are gone. Lost to the whirlwind and sucked out of my life by the very enemy I was fighting. They did the same things I did. Cried, prayed, held their heads up high, stiffened their lips, tried to be strong when they were not. I am here. They are not. I have had seventeen more glorious years. They did not. There is no answer to ‘why me?’. I am not more deserving or somehow better at fighting. I just sat in a chair. The same poison that killed my cancer, did not kill theirs.

The question that haunts me now is, what have I done with my seventeen extra years? Is it worthy of the gift I was granted? Would my friends, who did not survive, have done more or better than I have been able to do?  These kinds of questions are unanswerable, but that doesn’t stop them from rolling around in my head on the anniversary of my battle.

When I was sick, the windowless exam rooms, waiting rooms, operating rooms, and offices were dull and drab. Being shuttled from place to place, doctor to doctor was the majority of my days. Needles a daily occurrence sometimes. Nurses coming to my house to rip packing out of my incision, only to replace it with more that would have to be ripped out in a day. Every scene of this battle was acutely burned into my mind. Trauma gives your eyes super powers. While this is not usually something to be desired, these visual magnifiers also work outside of the drudgery of medical facilities.

I think this is why there is such contrast between the battlefield and the beauty. During this time, I have never seen trees with such clarity. The blues of the sky were like something I hadn’t ever witnessed in my life. Every drop of water in the river was individually a part of the whole. My children’s hair and the color of their eyes, all more vivid, more real. Each and every facet of life was under a lens of vibrancy. It was like a vision…some mystical experience, which used my eyes as a conduit to my mind. This visual acuity was both a blessing and a curse. I chose to focus on the blessing parts. I loved nature before, but while I was sick, I felt a part of it. As if I was aligned with God through the wonder of creation. I wrote my first book, The Nature of God, during this time because I had to try to capture it. To paint the pictures with words. To leave something behind for my kids, should I not make it through the battle. I was awakened to the fact, there is no time to waste. Life is shorter than we think.

Once a cancer patient, always a cancer patient. This is a true statement if there ever was one. Anyone who has been to Cancerland knows it. I still have my team of doctors. I still see them once a year. I certainly have enough battle scars to show my fight was intense. I am still traumatized by what happened to me. Memories sometimes present themselves for viewing in my sleep, or at random times during my days. My heart certainly breaks for those just entering the battle and their families. I wish I could take away the fear and wave a wand that healed every cell, but I cannot. I can only take the extra days I have been given and try to live them fully…honorably. In memory of my friends who didn’t survive the battle.