The Longer I Live, the Less I Remember I’m Dying

When I was diagnosed with DSRCT back in 2014, I did not expect to reach my second wedding anniversary. Now Christina and I have been married just over 5 years. In 2016 when some friends and I decided to plan for an annual Cedar Point trip, I thought “have fun; I won’t be there.” But next week I’ll make the third such visit to my favorite amusement park. My last three birthdays have all been pleasant surprises I did not expect to reach, and while I realistically shouldn’t give myself more than 50/50 odds of reaching my next one, it’s starting to feel more likely than not that I’ll actually make it to 27. Every time I pass a milestone I never thought I’d live to see, it gets a little easier to believe I’ll get to the next one and a little harder to remember that I am in fact dying.

And that raises some tough questions I can’t really answer. How much should I be mindful of my mortality? How much should I ignore that and just enjoy life while I still can? How much should I live every day like it’s my last, and how much should I plan for the future? I’ve been living with cancer for well over three years now. I can’t live a thousand days in a row like each is the last I’ll have. At some point I need to allow myself to think and plan at least a little more long-term than that. But I can’t pretend I have a normal lifespan ahead of me either. I don’t know how to balance that.

So sometimes I write furiously—hoping to get every book I’ve ever thought of out of my brain and into a word document—knowing full-well that the geologic pace of the literary industry means there’s little chance I’ll live to see any of my books get published. Sometimes I stop writing for a month or two, thinking it a waste of my limited time and energy to spend countless hours on something that’ll never go anywhere. I invariably wish I’d knocked out another book in that time though, and I always come back to my writing eventually. A few times over the last three years I’ve started searching and applying for real, steady jobs. Inevitably, before anything gets going I get a less-than-wonderful PET scan and change treatments. I only feel well-enough to be able to hold a conventional job when I don’t have many side-effects, and so far I only have minimal side-effects when my treatment isn’t really having any effects at all.

But maybe this is the right balance, if there even is a right balance. Maybe the best I can hope to do is whatever seems right at the time, knowing my circumstances and approach to how I spend my time will change in a week or a month or a year—if I live that long.