My Last Cancer Post…I Hope

Today is my second birthday.

Two years ago yesterday nurses were shoveling ice chips into my mouth to minimize oral blisters from a Melphalan injection. The Melphalan was the last ingredient of a toxic chemo cocktail that would kill my bone marrow, and thus my ability to make blood or muster an immune response. In essence, two year ago yesterday I received a lethal dose of chemo as a salvage attempt to rid my body of cancer because the preceding 6 months of chemical warfare was insufficient.

Two years ago today a doctor slowly pushed six syringes of my own frozen stem cells into my heart. The now thawed cells would find their way back to the not decimated core of my bones and, slowly at first, begins to make the cells to feed, defend, and repair my body.

Yesterday I received six shots as my second year vaccinations, completing a two year journey of recovery and a suppressed immune system. Two years of fearing colds, only eating hot processed foods. Two years of regrowing muscle, and weaning myself from drugs that modulated my pain, my blood chemistry, even my sleep. Two years from 42 steps in a hospital ward to going home to going to work to going on airplanes to visiting the world.

Since that day of ultimate peril I have been to the Tower of London, down the Italian boot swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, to the resort coast of Belgium, to the flower markets of Amsterdam, enjoyed a November Spring in New Zealand and a February summer in Australia. I have ridden a Segway through an historic garden in Rome, examines 1,500 year old illuminated manuscripts in the archives of Bruges, toured the Vatican Library, and three days ago plunged to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico to scuba among the fish.

I did all this with the love and support of a wife who never lost faith. With a mother who shared her faith with me. With two boys who make me more proud than I ever thought was possible. I have done it with co-workers who picked up the things I dropped and a community of colleagues who now truly span the globe. By my side have been doctors and nurses and medical technicians that healed my body and fed my mind.

I pray that you never have to learn what you are capable of by facing cancer, but there is nothing inherent in recovery that makes us challenge ourselves. Travel, fellowship, love, risk is ultimately a choice. A choice to say yes and know that you will fall. But also know you will get up. And if you can’t get up at first know that you can ask for help. A choice to see the world, even if your world is only as far as the street corner.

Not everyone recovers from cancer or a stem cell transplant. Not everyone will regain his or her strength or mobility. I am lucky. Cancer no longer defines my life or the confines within it. I choose to move beyond being a survivor to simply being a person. A person faced with decisions, tragedy, and triumph. I choose to engage, to attempt, to plan, to move forward and to face the barbs and pain that comes with that choice. What do you choose?