Choose Your Own Cancer Adventure

I have been thinking a lot about life and death lately… mine that is. I don’t have the same intuitive certainty that “I will make it through this” that I had when I was first diagnosed and facing 8 months of chemo. That’s not to say I feel that I will not make it through, I just simply don’t know this time the way knew last time. I have nothing deep down guiding me.

I do however feel that whatever happens is not entirely up to me anymore. Which is a hard thing to lump! I’ve never been a real “que sera sera” kinda gal; more like a make your own destiny, manage your own shit kinda chick. But if this all had been up to me I would have beat cancer after the first round, so perhaps it’s not all up to me?

So I’m prepping for both outcomes. Which is a really odd thing to be doing! It’s like I live in a choose your own adventure book where I’m starting out along one story and then with a flip of the page ill have to very different endings. Go to pg#46 for life or pg#89 for death. Except up until this point I was reading the book, now someone’s reading the book to me and choosing an ending. Surreal.

On the one hand I’m doing things to prepare my body for more chemo like exercising, eating well and taking a boatload of vitamins while making plans for the future during and after the chemo/BMT. At the same time I’m thinking a lot about what I want to happen if I die and what I can do now to make that better for my friends and family. And I’m not talking about writing out a Will or stupid shit like that, because I mean really ill be dead what do I care about ‘stuff’. I’m talking about what to say to whom and how with the assumption that it’s the last things that will ever be said between us.

I haven’t got very far because I fall apart when I try to think about it. Planning to live is easier than planning to die that’s for sure. But they feel equally as important right now, like no matter what; it’s something I have to do. It’s not that I’m afraid of death the way I think others are afraid of it, it’s more that I’m afraid of what happens to everyone else after I die. The things that bother me about my death are; I wish I could have done more, I’m afraid it will hurt, I’m afraid of the effect it will have on my family and I’m afraid it will happen too fast to say goodbye. Like death, they’re all things I can’t control.

So no matter what it’s I book I feel I have to write, so to speak, but I hope I’m not setting up the plot for a bad ending.