SURVIVORSHIP ISSUES: HOW TO LIVE WITH CANCER
We know that our shared goal must be to learn to live as though our cancer will never come back. Surely if we spend our lives struggling with fear and grief, the cancer has won— whether or not it ever recurs. If this is a challenge you must face in the future, you will find a way to do so. There will be moments and days when you are sad and afraid. Accept them. Know that sometimes, for all of us, the fear is like a wildcat on our backs, claws digging in. Try not to let it contaminate your joy and your appreciation for life. Instead, work toward seeing and appreciating how fragile and how wonderful life is!
Because we are all human, all of us must live with our own mortality. Birth and death are the two ultimate moments that define our lives. Our most gifted artists and poets have expressed the human condition in these terms since the beginning of recorded time.
We want to conclude by wishing you well on your journey and would like to leave two very different images with you, images that capture the two polarities between which we have often found ourselves vacillating: deep fear and exultant expectation. The first was written by the seventeenth-century British poet Andrew Marvell. Using a compelling image, Marvell describes forcefully the pressure of time that we who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness feel so acutely. The second image is contained within a poem written about two hundred years later by the American poet Emily Dickinson. Dickinson expresses beautifully the uplifting, energizing quality of keeping hope alive within. In the challenging weeks and months ahead of you, we encourage you to find your own balance.
But at my back I always hear Time’s winged charriot hurrying near.
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