Fighting fears

I found a good website tonight that gave me a lot of hope: 18 years living with stage IV colon cancer.

The publication date on that story was in 2016, so I nervously looked her up to see if she’s still alive—and she is! Unless the website updates the article every year, by my calculations, that means she’s lived with stage IV colon cancer for 21 years.

Yes, she’s an outlier for sure. But I’ve always believed that J would be the 1 in 10 who makes it past five years.

Is that naive? Very possibly so. But frankly, it’s the only way I can cope with his diagnosis. Honestly, his diagnosis and the thought of losing him are so traumatic to me that I kinda have to pretend it’s not really happening.

Most of the time, I can do that fairly well. Certainly not with 100 percent success of course, and the discovery of his recurrence back in February really knocked my optimism for a loop. (I’d call it a brutal fucking beatdown, if you want the honest truth.)

But in the meantime, I have to believe he’s not going anywhere, until I get notice otherwise. I assume he’ll be around to see Dylan graduate from college, even though that will put him well past that “magic” five-year mark.

In truth, I’m an optimist most of the time (albeit a scared one.) I refuse to believe things are really bleak until they actually are. May it be so.