For some reason, I never expected to learn something new after having bone marrow cancer for six years – but I did. Most of the “enormous” challenges I experienced did not last anywhere near as long as I thought they would. We usually don’t expect to hear something like that when we’re in the midst…
Read moreTag: Resilience
You May Never Get an Answer to “Why Me?”
It is okay that you do not have an answer. We are searching for answers about our lives, retracing steps and examining choices in hopes of finding the reason, explanation, or thing that makes sense out of this senseless diagnosis. The “why” we desperately seek isn’t found by looking backward. It is discovered by looking…
Read moreBrothers and Sisters in Battle: The Unexpected Gift of Connection
The Man in the Waiting Room
He was sitting there when I walked in, just another person in a hospital gown waiting for his name to be called. We exchanged the casual “hello” that strangers offer each other in shared spaces. But there was something different about this hello. It carried weight. Recognition. An unspoken understanding that we were both members of a club nobody volunteers to join.
Read moreWhen Everything Changes: Finding Strength in the Faces of Strangers Turned Friends
Six years ago, I found myself seated in a wheelchair, weak and afraid, reckoning with words that would eternally mark my life as divided into “before” and “after.” Stage III Bone Marrow Cancer. The diagnosis hung like a weight in the air that I could neither lift nor escape. I was a retired Maxillofacial Trauma Surgeon who had spent more than thirty years caring for thousands of patients, mending broken bones and mangled faces. I thought I understood medicine. I thought I knew what suffering was. But nothing prepares you for that moment when you become the patient. If you are reading this now, having just been diagnosed and searching for something—anything—to make sense of what is happening to you, I want you to know: I understand that terror. I know it well.
Read moreLife After Cancer: The Milestones No One Talks About
At the end of my treatment, I was expecting some sense of relief or presence coming out the other side. Instead, I felt utterly confused and lost. There was a nice path to follow up to “remission,” but there’s so much more to that. Here’s what I learned about the milestones we go through on…
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