One Day At A Time

You have cancer.

Those are the words that a good many folks will never have to hear. For some reason I thought I’d be in that group. I don’t really know why, it was just a feeling.

Wrong. At first I thought it was going to be a different diagnosis. Perhaps just a very serious flu or perhaps an infection I’d picked up from a fish bite or nick on the finger. I’d read about that and I’d heard about the “flesh eating” stuff that was very dangerous and had to be treated right away. But cancer? Not a chance.

It really did come out of the blue. So many survivors and people in remission have said the same thing. “It came out of nowhere. I wasn’t even sick and then...”

The only medicine I’d ever taken on a regular basis was Advil. I used it for the normal aches and pains of being a fishing guide and for the occasional over imbibing of alcohol, which had become less and less with age. You learn your limits as you pass your sixtieth birthday.

Cancer changed that. Now I take nine different medications to control everything from blood pressure to pain to infection to nausea and my ability to pee. I also take another as part of my daily chemo and then get a chemo shot twice a week. I then add 10 steroid pills taken all at once each Friday. I haven’t taken an Advil since my diagnosis in late February and I haven’t had a cocktail since then either. How’s that for irony?

Until you have cancer you have no idea what a person with cancer is going through. I thought I could sympathize with such a person but no, I couldn’t and can’t. It’s much too complicated. It’s hard to understand all the feelings that come with the diagnosis and it’s almost impossible to put it into words.

I do, however, understand what the support group is going through because I’ve been there, several times. I’ve lost a couple of good friends to cancer and I’ve also helped rescue a couple. Each time is different but it all adds up, just the same. You are on the outside looking in and the inside is impossible to fully understand.

One day at a time becomes the new mantra. The future is much too fickle and feels unreachable. It’s not, but it feels that way. One day at a time. That’s where I am right now. One day at a time.