What Now

Though I have always done my best to live in the moment, our culture--and without a doubt my own ambition--have certainly gotten in the way. I can't even recount the number of weekends I have spent working, the dinners I cancelled to stay in the office, not to mention all the personal emails and phone calls I postponed--often indefinitely.

So what of all that time? I still don't know how I feel about that, but I know this: It's not too late! Even if I have yet to achieve my own standard: live wihout regret. Happily, while I do have some regrets, mine are mostly pretty minor. And perhaps that's the reason the shock of the diagnosis was swiftly followed by deep serenity--peace, even. That, and a call to action to take control of the situation and focus on the immediate, immediately!

To that end, I threw myself head first into research (I'd be an overachiving cancer patient!). With Jana (councelor from the cancer center), my Cancer handbook (Jana gave me my own copy now that I had joined the club!) and "Googles", I set off to put all my graduate school research skills to good use. I flipped and clicked, read and highlighted, and came to the conclusion that being a cancer patient takes a LOT of reading. Who knew there'd be this much homework?

Like a good academic I sought to determine my approach to this process, a theme if you would. I wanted to prepare for my first meeting with the surgeon immediately following the long 4th of July holiday weekend. I wanted to be clear in my heart about my wishes before learning the full extend of my particular cancer. At this point, all I knew was that I had non-differentiated, invasive ductal carcinoma. I also knew that statistically, due to my age, my cancer was aggressive and would progress very quickly. So I formulated my bottom line: Quality over Quantity.