Cancer diagnosis forces you to decide what really matters in life

By David McElroy · January 16, 2012

Two weeks from today, a surgeon will cut me open and remove a lump from my left breast. Few things will focus your attention on what matters in life as quickly as finding out that you have cancer cells growing in your body.

Just a few weeks ago, I noticed a lump under the skin on the left side of my chest. It seemed to just show up without warning one day. After seeing several doctors in the time since then, I found out Thursday that there were cancerous cells in that mass. It’s not the sort of thing that anyone expects, so there’s no way to be prepared for such news.

Breast cancer is about 100 times more common in women than in men. In men, it’s not as likely to spread to other parts of the body as the female version of the disease is. I probably have a greater risk of being killed in a car accident in the next five years than I do of having this thing kill me. Still, it’s one of those things that gets your attention and makes you think seriously about what matters to you.

Until last Tuesday, it still wasn’t striking me that it even could be cancer. I knew it was a theoretical possibility, but I just assumed it would be a benign cyst of some sort. I’ve known other people who’ve found such lumps and had to have surgery to have them removed, but they’ve always turned out to be benign. That’s what I assumed would be the case for me.

One of the lower-level doctors had come in to tell me that another doctor — the specialist — would be coming in to stick a needle into me to get some tissue for a biopsy. He left and I was alone in the room to wait. For some reason, I’ve never felt as alone as I felt in the minutes I waited. I can’t say it was surreal. Instead, it was hyper-real, as though I was more aware of everything than I’ve ever been.

All of a sudden — without even thinking about it consciously — I was very aware of which things in life truly mattered to me. And which things didn’t matter.

First and foremost on my mind was Her. You don’t need to know who she is. It wouldn’t matter to you. I knew beyond all question that what I most wanted was to have Her with me. Why? She couldn’t have changed what was about to happen. She couldn’t have affected the diagnosis. It wasn’t pragmatic. It wasn’t something I could really explain. I just knew that if I could have relived my life, I would have changed whatever I had to change — just so she could be there.

There are so many things that bother me every day, but those things haven’t bothered me in the same way since then. Maybe they’ll start bugging me again as I put more distance between myself and the initial realization of what’s going on. I don’t know. I hope I can hold onto this vivid distinction about what matters and what doesn’t, because it’s a much calmer, saner and pleasant way to live.

I didn’t tell anyone the news until Thursday. When I told Her, she asked me whether it made me think about mortality. I hadn’t consciously considered the question, but I immediately knew the answer. It’s definitely made me think about the limits of life — about the relative briefness of it — but not in the way we normally think of when we speak of mortality.

Most of the time when people talk about mortality, they’re talking about the end of life — about death. It hasn’t made me think about death. It’s made me think about life instead, but in the sense of wondering why it’s taken me this long to really start getting clear on some things that matter to me. Why didn’t I know five years ago? Or three years ago? Or even a year ago?

I suspect it’s simply because we have the unspoken assumption that life goes on and on and on, so we act as though we have forever to actually start getting serious about doing the things we want to do. Although I still believe I’m going to live a long and healthy life after this — with a big scar on the left side of my chest — I also look to the past and wonder why I’ve wasted so much time thus far.

Was it wasted time? Insofar as accomplishing much, yes, it was. Maybe I had to go through that “wasted time” to become mature enough and wise enough to learn what my priorities are. I’m not sure. I just know that it still makes me laugh to apply words such as “mature” and “wise” to myself.

I’m not looking forward to surgery or to the recovery period. I don’t mind admitting that I’m a wimp when it comes to the idea of being cut on. But what if this is the price I have to pay to clarify what matters most to me? What if the moments of clarity in that exam room last Tuesday and then the phone call from the doctor on Thursday were the beginnings of real life? The end of wasting too much time on things that don’t matter?

If that’s the case, it will be worth it. I have a short list of priorities now that I’m completely clear about. I have a new sense of the importance of love and life and the things I feel called to do. In those ways, maybe this can be the beginning of living my life as I’d really like to — rather than feeling as though I’m wasting too many days and weeks and even years.

I’ll let you know more when there’s news to tell.

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Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

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