More time

There's a guy who used to play volleyball with my beach group--he was very good, better than pretty much anyone else who plays with us. (I am decidedly average, myself.) Unlike many people who give unwanted or unhelpful advice, he was good at pinpointing how someone could play better. One of his favorite comments was, "You have more time than you think you have."

He said it when a hard serve came over the net and someone (like me) spazzed toward it awkwardly, flailing and then shanking the ball far out of bounds. He said it when a low set sailed toward a post and someone (like me) jabbed at it, panicking, and hit the ball right into the net. He was always right, and it's one of the most helpful pieces of advice I've gotten. The better players have a lovely economy of motion, like Neo in The Matrix--realizing they have enough time to do what they need to do and do it calmly, which makes everything go better.

So why this volleyball reverie on a cancer blog? Because I'm going to assert that it's true for cancer, too: You have more time than you think you have. True as a philosophical statement, true on many levels. You have more time to make decisions in the very beginning--it's not necessary to rush into surgery in 3 days and rush into treatment after that. It's OK to take the time to make the decisions well. You may have more time in life than your diagnosis suggests, who knows; my aunt Sylvia lived for 11 years past her prognosis of 2. My grandma, who died of lung cancer, outlived her prognosis by a couple of years.

Perhaps most important, though, you have more time than you think you do right now. Cancer is easy to obsess over, but think of all the time it claims that way--time it takes away from living life.

It's a good mantra in general, I think. You have more time than you think you do.

Control

Watching a close family member deal with the early days of cancer treatment is reminding me of cancer's biggest lesson: You Are Not In Control.

Those first few days and weeks were mind-numbing (or head-spinning; or both). You don't have enough information to make decisions, but you have to make decisions immediately. You are tasked with quarterbacking your own medical care though you do not have the lifetime of learning and experience that your doctors have. You must choose between providers without knowing what defines quality, or how it's measured. There is absolutely no way to find a shortcut solution to the months of pain and fear and difficulty that await you; and once treatment starts and you're pumped full of poisons and you're thrown vehemently off balance by nausea or bone pain or sadness or dying cells, there is exactly nothing that you can do that restores that balance until time and healing take their own natural courses.

I have always been a person who saw exactly what I wanted in any situation, and could figure out pretty quickly how to attain it. I am not passive. I confront, I pursue, I accomplish.

But cancer doesn't care about any of this. It laughs at initiative, scoffs at competence. The most painful loss in cancer is the loss of belief in control. Unlike a body part, removed surgically and cleanly under anesthesia, control is ripped away painfully--bloody and ragged and unwilling.

Recovering from cancer restores some of the illusion of control, but I gotta tell you, it is now impossible to revert to the full belief. There are situations happening in my life--I so wish I could share them, but for so many different reasons, and to protect so many different people, I simply can't. But I face these difficult situations and all I can see is that every alternative is fraught and imperfect, and there is exactly nothing that I can do to sidestep all pain and trouble. Perhaps I'd have learned this lesson without cancer. But I learned it with cancer, and life just keeps reviewing the lesson.

A-ha...It's a theme

Following up on my post from a few days ago: Today, salon.com's advice columnist replies to a letter-writer who, in her 30s, has survived cancer and isn't sure she wants to go back to her exact pre-cancer life. It must be really tough to be filled with a fire for living and have everyone else standing around you with buckets.

The letters section already has a little debate going (and, as of this writing, there are only 5 or 6 letters). Should she do what she wants, bucket brigade be damned, in the spirit of living her life to the fullest? Or should she rein in those impulses, recognize the precious gift that is a community of loved ones in her life, and accept some limitations in exchange for those ties that bind her to others and to this world? It's a hard question, and heck if I know the answer.

Because Cancer exists

Time for a check:

How have you spent your time today? This week? This month?

How often have you done things that gave you joy or were deeply meaningful to you?

How much have you been close to the important people in your life?

At those times when you had a choice, how often did you choose to pursue connectedness and passionate engagement, versus rote activity that bores or deadens you?

When you were working, how much of your work did you invest with commitment, and how many of your accomplishments do you look back on with pride?

How much have you moved your body, felt your muscles and bones equal to the challenges you set for them? How well have you guarded your health and made choices to exalt your body?

How have you loved? How have you been loved?

If you felt bad, did you embrace the experience and live with it?

Who knows how much life any of us has. We have right now. One of my lessons from cancer was to live right now, and not wait to live years later.