The Deck I Was Handed
After years of living with cancer, I have learned that an accurate view of my situation matters more than a hopeful one. Hope without accuracy is a house built on sand. So let me start with the facts.
This cancer can be treated, but it cannot be cured. Doctors can push it back, slow it down, and sometimes drive it so far into the distance that I forget its shape. They cannot make it leave for good. It has a habit of returning at its own pace, on its own schedule, without sending word ahead.
The waiting brings its own stress. Every scan, every blood draw, every ordinary ache that might be ordinary or might be something else. I have learned to live with a question mark hanging over my shoulder, and I will be honest: some days it sits heavier than others.
But there are times when it does not show. Those are the times to celebrate.
I mean that literally. Call someone. Eat the good meal. Sit in the sun and let it land on your face. A stretch of quiet is not the absence of a story. It is a chapter, and it deserves to be lived, not skipped through while you brace for the next one.
Being ill is no game. I want to say that clearly, because people sometimes talk about illness as if attitude decides the winner. It doesn’t. Feeling lousy is part of it. Fatigue is part of it. Fear is part of it. Grief for the plans you made before the diagnosis is part of it. None of that means you are doing it wrong.
Still, there is a game inside this not-game. It is the one where you learn to play the cards you were dealt. Not the hand you wanted. Not the hand you thought you earned. The hand on the table.
Some cards are strong. Some are weak. Some you would throw in the fire if you could. But you cannot trade them in, and the longer you glare at them, the less time you have to play.
So here is how I try to play.
I look for the good in things. Not the forced kind. Not the poster on the wall. The real kind, small and specific, the kind you only notice when you slow down. A day with less pain. A conversation that runs long. A meal that tastes like a meal.
I find ways around the challenges. When a door closes, I check the windows. When the windows are locked, I ask who has a key. Sometimes the answer is a nurse, a friend, or a stranger who has walked this road. I have learned to ask.
I accept the situation. This one took me the longest. Acceptance is not surrender. It does not mean the cancer wins. It means I stop spending my strength arguing with the facts and spend it on the life in front of me. Not in spite of the illness. Not in denial of it. Alongside it.
And I adjust. The ground shifts. A plan that worked last spring fails this fall. A medication that helped stops helping. An energy level I counted on goes missing. Adjusting means I change the plan, not the person making it.
I will not tell you everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that, and I won’t ask you to. Some things simply happen. What we do afterward is where our choices live.
If you carry something that will not leave, here is what I can offer. You do not need to feel brave. You do not need to be cheerful. You do not need to be the strong one every day. You only need to keep playing the hand, one round at a time, and let other people sit at the table with you.
I need them too. I want to say that plainly. I am not writing from the opposite shore. I am in the water beside you, and some days I stay afloat because someone else reached out a hand.
The cancer will visit again. I know that. I have stopped pretending otherwise.
But it does not get every day. It does not get my humor. It does not get my voice. It does not get the quiet mornings, the long talks, the small wins stacked one on top of another.
Those belong to me. They belong to you, too.
Still here. Still playing. Still celebrating.
