Anniversaries exist in all shapes and sizes.  Birthdays would be the number one of these as you celebrate the day of your arrival into the world.  Marriage anniversaries tend to come in second for better or worse.  Many a man gets in trouble by overlooking this one.  They can even be painful occasions.  We will mark next September 11 as the tenth anniversary of that attack by terrorists.  We tend to forget that people do remember the day when a loved one died.  Life is marked by remembering significant dates.  This is true for me as much as it is for you.  I mark today as six months since my doctor declared me a cancer survivor.  This is as much a somber event as it is one to celebrate.  Knowing what to do or feel still seems a bit odd.

One of the things that I did lately was to read again some if not all of my writing during my diagnosis and treatment.  That takes me back nearly a full year from now.  I knew this time last April that something was going wrong.  One doctor thought the growth behind my ear was nothing to worry about.  You can't really be too upset with her as it was a weird condition.  A dermatologist could tell me little more about what was going on without taking a biopsy.  He sounded almost as shocked as me when he phoned me with the news.  Information like that really should not come around the time of your birthday as it did for me.  And so began the long journey into further tests which were not promising at all.  Dying really is an unusual feeling for anyone to experience.  Moving into treatment seemed a long shot at best.  I remember asking if it would do any good after receiving my prognosis.  My nurse turned out to be prophetic when she said something good would come of it.  Success would be announced about five months after my initial visit to the oncologist.  Now we are six months from that day of good news.

Let me just add a reminder that my disease is probably not totally gone as happens with other cancers.  Now that does not mean that it may be eliminated either.  Killing every single cell of lymphoma is a dicey endeavor to start.  My illness begins due to the immune system.  Cells go a little crazy to spread out through my system.  Relapse is almost expected even if no one can pinpoint that date.  I also spent time the last few days reading again from a website where much of my attention was during my time of trial.  Medical breakthroughs are still constant but so is the probability of becoming ill again.  What the next step would be for my treatment is unknown.  We will not get that answer unless the day arrives.  My official label is that I have no evidence of disease.  This is not the same as being cancer free.  Until some super test comes along we will be content with that. 

So the whole day is a blend of serious thought and great gratitude.  I know life will never be the same.  Physical issues are common between the effects of high power drugs and the aging process.  Stopping my disease took as great a toll as being sick.  Nothing can be done to alter that truth.  My emotions hold up pretty good most of the time.  Frustration is the common feeling as it comes from the chemo brain moments.  Worry or anxiety really is not a big problem.  One of my rules for life says all you can do is all you can do.  My times remain in the hand of God.  The spiritual part of living is much more normal than in those early days of diagnosis.  One of my great faults may be in being too content with how things went.  I will never stop being grateful for my remission.  I just tend to allow that one blessing be the defining moment.  Living in the present tense calls for a continuous effort to grow in faith.  None of us can spend all of our time looking backward.  Anniversaries are a good place to start as long as you don't let them be an ending more than a new beginning. 

Bro. Trey