What year would YOU give up?

Recently, several friends said they missed my blog entries. I have been busy with work and family, but more importantly, I have frankly questioned my ability to keep this blog compelling. I can no longer write about cancer treatments. Now my stories are about cancer survivorship--meaning life after cancer--meaning life like it was, but different. Do I still have stories to tell? Observations to make? Here's one...

The other day David asked if I could eliminate a year from my life, which year would it be. Of course, most people would eliminate the year they were diagnosed with cancer. Not me. The year I was diagnosed changed my life. I gained an appreciation for life (all the little things). I confirmed what I knew: that I have a loving and supportive family plus simply the very best friends.

No surprise that I gained a greater appreciation for life, family and friends. But I gained another unexpected benefit. I experienced the healing power of creativity, in my case, writing. Instead of feeling blue about my treatments, my days were spent thinking about possible blog topics and writing drafts in my head. Oddly, those months of profound physical exhaustion were some of the most most creative and reflective times of my life. I had written before, but this was the first time that I wrote from my soul while others listened.

No, the year I would eliminate from my life would be one of the many years that I struggled to finish my dissertation. Yes, I would gladly remove from my memory all that time spent in intellectual purgatory. The memories of me slugging through the underbelly of the "uses and gratifications" theory of media consumption are still raw. They were lonely years-just me and my computer, stacks of journal articles, SPSS and empty coffee cups.

While my blog entries flowed effortlessly from my heart, often with tears in my eyes (from crying or laughing), the final version of my 250 page dissertation came out of some dark place on my computer's hard drive. Sometime I would use an egg timer just to keep myself at the keyboard.

Genice, a good friend of mine, recently started her own blog. Check out her perspective on my illness. She recently wrote an entry called "Taking Nothing For Granted" about me on her blog. You'll need to scroll down.


Genice's Blog