{"id":17416,"date":"2012-12-31T16:27:07","date_gmt":"2012-12-31T22:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=17416"},"modified":"2012-12-31T19:29:45","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T01:29:45","slug":"a-year-after-first-seeing-doctor-about-cancer-how-much-have-i-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=17416","title":{"rendered":"A year after first seeing doctor about cancer, how much have I learned?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Last<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a year ago today that I saw a doctor for the first time about what I was to discover was breast cancer.<\/p>\n

I had been feeling a small lump for a couple of weeks and I finally decided — on New Year’s Eve — to call a doctor friend and go over to his house for advice. He took a look and told me that it could be benign, but there was a good chance it was cancer. He gave me advice about who to see.<\/p>\n

Then we sat on his porch next to some woods and watched the last sunset of the year through the trees. (That’s a picture I took at the time.) It’s hard to believe that’s been a year.<\/p>\n

The end of a year and the beginning of another one almost always leads to reflection. For me — this year in particular — it leads to questions about what I’ve learned and whether I’ve “spent” the year wisely. I certainly didn’t have any control over the way the year started. I didn’t have any control over the uncertainty that came from the diagnosis of breast cancer and the surgery to remove it. But I’m not sure how well I handled the rest of the year. I’m not sure I’m any better off than I was as I sat on my friend’s porch in the late afternoon a year ago.<\/p>\n

Up until that lump showed up, I had big plans for 2012. When you find out you have cancer, plans go out the window. Uncertainty creeps into everything. That’s understandable, but I think I let that overshadow everything else. I don’t think I ever got to the place of saying, “Hey, that was scary, but it’s over. I can go back to what I’d planned.”<\/p>\n

I think that my fear — and especially the fear of what it felt like to go through the crisis alone — threw me into a tailspin that’s taken longer to recover from than I realized. In some undefined way, I was waiting for someone to rescue me, I think. It’s hard to accept that nobody’s going to rescue me. I just have to deal with life — and with life-threatening crises — alone.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what I learned from 2012. I guess I learned what it feels like (for the first time) to be a piece of meat going through the processing of the medical system. I learned what it’s like to go to sleep in a surgical theater not knowing what’s going to happen while I’m out. I learned what it feels like to beat cancer. And I learned that I can do all of that alone, even if I hate it.<\/p>\n

Right now, I have big plans for 2013. I plan to pick some things up where I left off last year before the cancer showed up. But I’ve learned that things happen in unexpected ways and for unexpected reasons.<\/p>\n

Woody Allen is credited with saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” I have plans for the upcoming year. I have things I want to create. I have things I want to achieve. I have things I want to build. And I don’t want to be alone while I’m doing all of them.<\/p>\n

I have plans. God laughed at me a year ago. I hope He has less reason to laugh at me today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a year ago today that I saw a doctor for the first time about what I was to discover was breast cancer. I had been feeling a small lump for a couple of weeks and I finally decided — on New Year’s Eve — to call a doctor friend and go over to Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-4wU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17416"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17427,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17416\/revisions\/17427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}