The Gift That Keeps on Giving...

Is it possible for me to be thankful for the life that I am presented with and also hope that, through a miracle, my life is changed into something else entirely? I have chronicled in this blog that we should not shrink away from the difficulties presented us in our lives, but rather by embracing our struggles we are able to grow and learn in ways that would be impossible otherwise. It makes perfect sense to me that we should not be afraid or try and run away from our struggles because they are capable of transforming us; however, it also makes perfect sense to hope and pray that, through miracles, we will be relieved of our struggles. 

It's easy to say that we should accept our difficulties so that we can learn from them if at the end of the struggle everything ends positively. If you go through a trying and difficult time and you emerge from that experience healthy and happy (or your loved one emerges healthy and happy), then it is easy to look back over that difficult time and see the positive sides. It would be much more difficult to watch a loved one pass away or suffer intensely and then try and find positivity. It is with that wrench in the mix that I'm asking whether you can accept your difficulties happily and also pray for a miracle to change your life.

I've spent over three years trying to accept my life with cancer and deal with the difficulties in as positive a manner as possible. But every second that passed in that time I have been praying that God would create a miracle in my life and relieve me from the struggles of cancer. I have grown from my experience and learned so much invaluable information - lessons that I would never trade for anything - but I don't want to stay sick forever. When the book closes on this saga, I want to be one hundred percent healthy. 

Even though I have been praying for a miracle every day over the last three years, I have never asked God to take away the cancer just because I wanted it gone. Instead, what I've asked is that if I'm chosen as deserving of a miracle that God create that miracle as he sees fit. Whether that means a miracle is moments away or years away, my hope is just that I'm lucky enough to get a miracle, but if not then I will welcome my future as it comes. It's logical that I would want to not suffer, but, to me, it also is logical that if you must suffer, then you shouldn't complain or curse God, but rather simply accept your cup and drink from it. Jesus Christ did not want to suffer, but suffering was his fate and so although he asked that he not be made to suffer, he resolved that if suffering was his destiny that he accepted it as his destiny and loved it as his destiny. 

I have had friends and families that were not lucky enough to receive a miracle. I've had an e-mail companion who was not lucky enough to receive a miracle. I've had old teachers that were not lucky enough to receive a miracle. What I do know is that each of these wonderfully inspirational people fought as hard as they could against there struggles and they fought with the voracity of the Spartan army. Alas, by virtue of their humanity, though they fought through hell and high-water, they simultaneously wished for a miracle that they may be saved.

I can't explain the perhaps displaced guilt that I feel when thinking that I'm still around and they are not. I feel guilty looking into my cousins' eyes knowing that their mother isn't around. I feel guilty looking at my friend's eyes knowing his de facto fiancee isn't around. I feel guilty looking into any person's eyes because everyone has known somebody who has suffered a tragedy. I feel guilty that I've been lucky by being able to survive this long, and I, like each of them, pray and wish and hope that I will receive a miracle that I may be saved. What I know is that, though each of the people I am describing wished for their own survival, that they all, knowing me, simultaneously wished for my survival as well. If my position was switched with theirs then they would be writing here about their guilt.

Because of my guilt and because of my experience, I look at my life and my struggles and I try and accept them openly and fight against the difficulties honorably. But because of my humanity I will hope and pray for a miracle to change the difficulties right now facing me. It seems a tall task, but it also seems fitting, that I will try and live my life happily and in a matter that my fallen friends will smile when looking down. I will try and live my life so that the loved ones of those who have fallen will not say that I'm wasting the gift that I've been given that their loved ones were not - the gift of life. 

"Life is a gift, and it gives us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more." - Tony Robbins

Look Who's Talking Now...

What was the cause of cancer? I'm not talking about what causes cancer. I'm asking you what caused cancer in the first place. Smoking causes cancers, drinking causes cancers, genetic predisposition causes cancer, but again I'm curious as to what is the first reason for cancer ever having occurred. There are documentations written on papyrus from around 1500 B.C. that explain separate occurrences of tumors being found in human tissue. There has also been speculation by some archeologists that hardened tumors have been uncovered on dinosaur fossils. So you see, I'm interested to know if you are interested in knowing how, when, and why cancer first started. The most likely answer is that we will probably not know how, when, or why cancer first started. We will have to accept that cancer is more than likely a random act of nature that we will never fully understand. We will have to accept that cancer is one of many things that can be classified as beyond our understanding. 

But we are not comfortable with the idea that there are things that we cannot understand. We believe that whatever we personally cannot understand, there are some people that do understand the things that we do not know, likewise we know things that other people do not know. This shared knowledge is part and parcel of a social contract of which we all are apart. If I know everything that I can know about A, but know very little about B, and you know everything you can know about B, but you know very little about A, then between you and I we know everything we can know about A and B. This is the type of environment in which we believe we exist. Among all the people in the national and global population we comfort ourselves by believing that we know everything that can be known about everything. So when we need our plumbing fixed we call a plumber because those are the people who know about plumbing. And when we need to fix our car we take it to a mechanic because those are the people who know about cars. When we need medical assistance we go to see a doctor because doctors are the people who know about health. At least that's the precedence for our belief system.

But our belief system is a lie. Actually it's not actually a lie, because a lie would mean that someone is creating this ideology falsely in order to deceive us, but that's not really what's happening. We all know that there are things in this world that no one knows, so it's not a lie. It's like Isaac Newton's laws of physics: if you follow out the mathematical calculations of Newton's laws it turns out that the math does not completely work itself out. The math is so close to being accurate, however, that we accept the laws as truths despite their inaccuracies. Likewise, we accept the social contract that states that whatever we don't know personally somebody somewhere knows despite the inaccuracies of the contract.

I've said many times in the last three years that doctors can say that your life will end soon, similarly they can tell you that everything is A-OK, but the truth of the matter is that there is no way that the doctors can know everything. As far as what doctors are capable of knowing, though, cancer is at the very bottom of the list. Doctors understand very little about cancer especially in comparison to how often the disease occurs. I have detailed in this blog ad nauseam that the doctors believed that I would be dead a long time ago, and yet I am still alive. I have also told you all in this online memoir that there have been multiple occasions in which the doctors told me that I would no longer be living, and yet I promise you that I'm alive. 

I guess this post goes back to my statistics thesis, or my statistics antithesis. Life does not follow logic or reason or mathematics. Whether our lives are predestined or we have free will we can debate forever, but in either case whatever happens to us or will happen to us does not follow a certain equation and it certainly does not follow the dialogue of medical doctors. In other words, just because someone tells you a certain thing will happen does not guarantee that the thing will actually happen. We all seem to understand this when it comes to certain professions - politicians, lawyers, hair stylists - but what we need to understand is that this fact also applies to the professions we normally associate with inarguable facts by virtue of their professions - doctors, teachers, accountants. No matter what we are told at a given time it by no means limits the number of possible outcomes. There is no such thing as good news or bad news, there is only news and our perspective to that news at a given time.

Doctors are not infallible predictors of the future and it is not they that pretend to be such, it is we who assign them that characteristic. Personally I could give a damn what the doctors tell me will happen to me because as much as they may have studied cancer, more often than not the doctor has never had cancer. As much as he knows about what the medical books say about cancer that gave him the title he holds today, I know a hell of a lot more when it comes to undergoing the disease itself.

I graduated in the top 30% of students at New York University, a school which graduates among the most students per year throughout the country. I graduate cum laude. When it comes to doctors I always keep this small fact in mind, and you should too: it is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduated in the bottom half of their classes.

Don't believe everything that you're told...