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CANCER SURVIVALThere is a point the reality of your life sets in. Cancer survival becomes the only thing that's important. Cancer survival is in your mind from morning to night, and even after you fall asleep. Surviving cancer consumes your every thought. The reality of cancer survival is described in Chapter Twenty.EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER TWENTY "Things have been going so well these past weeks. I feel as if we are in a holding pattern. We are waiting. We talked about it the other morning, standing in the doorway of the bathroom. We spoke about the waiting. We are waiting for something to happen. Ivan said, as he has before, "I don't understand how they can say I'm so sick. I don't feel sick." We agreed: if the cancer gets to his bones and begins to make him sick and in pain, that is when we want it to be over. Then we moved on with the rest of our day. We talk about death and dying in little conversations. We don't dwell on it. But, we talk about it. Perhaps what we are going through is kind of like being in an airplane at 30,000 feet. We are circling and circling. We know the fuel will run out eventually. We don't know how much fuel the tanks hold. We don't know how much remains. We just know that we aren't going to be allowed to land. We know, when the fuel runs out, we will crash. To lighten the load so that the fuel lasts longer, we begin to throw things out of the storage compartment. First, we throw out the things that have little value. As time goes on, we discard more and more and try to come up with ways to solve our dilemma. Soon, the only thing that is important is to save our life. And we know we can't do that. But, we want the flight to last as long as possible." MORE EXCERPTS: Prologue - Cancer Chapter One - Lung Cancer Chapter Two - The Moment Chapter Three - Brain Tumor Cancer Chapter Ten - The Gamma Knife Personal Notes on the Battle with Lung Cancer  |