Thinking Out Loud: A Cancer Blog: On Gratitude: Is It Too Dramatic To Say It?

I've started writing this post more than a dozen times in my head. The problem is that every time I dip my toes into the topic of gratitude, it feels like I'm swimming in a sea of cliches. I think that's why I struggled to write something to my anonymous stem cell donor for so long. In the end, what I sent to my 20-year-old donor felt watered down by that same ocean. It's so hard, even for me who has been writing about cancer for years, to put the feelings in words. More than that, it's hard for me to even process the emotions floating around inside my head in order to first understand what I feel, and then turn those feelings into meaningful words.

It's also hindered by the fact that while I like to string together a few well-crafted sentences from time to time, I quietly step aside from melodrama. I tend to downplay things instead of pumping them up and have a somewhat pathological need for truth in storytelling. So much so, that I'll find myself self-censoring phrases like: "that was the best ever" and "you saved my life" because, if you say something was the best ever, it kinda feels like you can't say that again, unless you're constantly topping yourself and downgrading your previous best-ever experiences. Maybe I need to allow a little more drama to seep through. And maybe, even by my overly strict standards, it's still possible to say I've had plenty of drama these past nearly two years.

For here we are now two years out from when shit got real, as they say, and 16 months post transplant and just now, I'm starting to understand this and the magnitude of what has rained down upon us since 2022. It's been a gradual process as I rowed against my mental thought current. See, for 10-11 years, I was a cancer patient without ever really being sick. I didn't feel sick (except for a couple days over those 11 years immediately post chemo); I didn't look sick (never lost weigh dramatically, or lost hair); I didn't act sick. I exercised, traveled, worked - all regularly. So for all this time, I never thought of myself as sick.

That all changed, of course in late July/early August of 2022. With a belly full of tumors and 10 days of unrelenting pain, it's not overly dramatic to say I was sick, really sick. Sick enough to be hospitalized for four days; sick enough to require immediate chemo and then, when that put me in full remission, still sick enough to try to wipe out my immune system completely, and replace it with donor stem cells.

So it's not dramatic to say that I was battling some serious health issues. Even after the rapid effects of the R-CHOP chemotherapy got me back on my feet, I was still staring down the prospects of an allogenic stem cell transplant. And it's hard to be in the hospital for four weeks, watching your white blood cells be obliterated to zero before they climb back up to a "safe" amount - and not be defined as sick. But this time it wasn't the lymphoma that was making me sick, it was the treatment.

And of course the recovery, which lasted, in phases for a full year. Well what was that then? Sickness? Recovery? Normal? Was I sick when I was home but isolated in my room, unable to see anyone besides my family; when I couldn't leave the house except for the backyard; couldn't interact with my dogs; couldn't eat anything not prepared in my kitchen; couldn't contribute in any meaningful way to keeping the house in order (no lawn care, no cleaning supplies, no vacuuming)?

Was I sick when I had weeks of Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD)-induced GI issues which were eventually controlled by an additional anti-rejection drug. Was I sick when I missed Matt's college graduation?

Yeah, I was sick.

And yet, even now I still blanche when that word is used. It's come up recently in casual conversations - more a reference to a point in time, like that time when Michael was overseas, or remember back during the pandemic, or hey, we once lived a slightly different version of our lives. But I'm trying not to correct the term, and even use it myself. It is not dramatic. It's just accurate.

Maybe my mind has finally caught up with reality. Or now that I'm feeling good, my mind can afford to admit that there was a time when that wasn't so. And I'm grateful to be on the other side of that, but again, grateful seems too weak a word.

Every day. Every. Single. Day... my life is full of impossibilities - full of things I could not do as little as three, six, nine, or twelve months ago. Little daily activities like getting fresh bagels from our favorite store or eating restricted foods like deli meats or soft cheeses, or having a beer; social actions such as simply going to a store without a mask, or going to a restaurant with my family. Work things too - like having in-person meetings, taking the commuter rail into Boston. It's an endless list of things for which I'm truly grateful, culminating in a recent week long trip to Spain to visit Noah as he wrapped up his summer study program. Flying, European trains, eating out, going to crowded tourist destinations, staying in hotels? Unfathomable a year ago.

All of these things that make up some semblance of normal living were simply not possible. And so while I may shy away from declaring that I'm grateful to be alive, I'm quite comfortable to say how immensely grateful I am to be living.

And that's not being dramatic.

--Michael

And now, some photos from Spain