Cancer tries to steal things from you.
It should be re-marketed as Can't-cer. Can't taste food anymore. Can't sleep for a consecutive stretch of more than 4 hours anymore. Can't avoid the occasional moping introspection about mortality anymore.
It's not like getting shot, or in a serious car accident. If you survive those things, you recalibrate and move forward. You pay the price and get to the business of moving on with life.
The problem with cancer is that it keeps charging even after the initial transaction is done, and you keep getting these annoying phishing emails trying to pull you back into recurrence.
In a way, it's a little like stumbling into a patch of quick-sand. Not only does it try to suck you under and suffocate you, but if it doesn't kill you, it still tries keep you locked in one place (Cancer limbo sucks). You find yourself trapped in a landscape of perpetual risk and anxiety.
Cancer is a taker.
But surviving cancer does GIVE you some things. Insight. Perspective. A new and distinct vantage point to look at what matters in your life.
If you're a cancer sufferer/survivor, and a father - remember that tomorrow.
Happy Father's Day.
You're still here. Whatever the circumstance, you're still here.
Time to enjoy the ones you love.
I hope you can park this unhappy relationship with cancer and not allow it to taint the other, more positive, relationships in your world.
If you're in the C-C-Club (that's not a stutter, it's the Combating Cancer Club, an invention of my own, trademark pending), and you're a Dad, Pending-Dad, Grand-Dad or Great-Grand-Dad ...
... Happy Father's Day for tomorrow.
