Manageable. Another word j’adore because it doesn’t over promise.
To say that something is manageable doesn’t presume that there is no challenge, but clearly states that something can be accomplished without great difficulty.
My side effects of treatment are currently highly manageable. Flipping unbelievable given the fact that not so long ago I was ready to call it quits.
Instructional, this. One of the inherent difficulties of cancer is that the cure (aspirational) is often worse than the disease. And to think that I might have stopped a treatment that is essentially keeping me stable due to mucositis and over the top depression–both of which are currently manageable.
Damn. It’s spooky, particularly given the fact that I am now two years into progression, and that two years was the ball park survival stat we initially arrived at.
Too much of successfully addressing cancer is right place, right time. Had I not gone in for a COVID-19 test and encountered a nurse who had worked with head and neck cancers, I likely would not have discovered the product that is keeping my mucous membranes almost sore free (2-amino-4-carbamoylbutanoic acid disaccharide complex). And had I not been so emphatic per my degree of depression, an additional (and highly effective) anti-depressant would not have been added to my regimen.
So yes, chance. But also–and this is the part we do have control over–relentless self advocacy.
It still sucks to be going through a pandemic while also battling a terminal illness. But it sucks way less than it did a couple of months ago, when I was ready to throw in the towel.
I am back to that magical place where I say to myself “I can do this”. And that, my friends, is the essence of hope.
Simply doable.
xo
life and breath: outliving lung cancer 