Kurt

He's tall, but he hopes to achieve more in life than just that.

Thank You Cancer

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Certainly, if it were my choice, I would not have chosen to have my body completely revolt on me and crank up my white blood cell count from somewhere around a normal of 4500 – 10,000 healthy cells to well over 90,000 cancerous cells. But since it was not my choice and since this disease was chosen for me, it must mean that there is a reason that I am the chosen one, right? Perhaps. Regardless of the why, ever since the moment I was told that I have leukemia I have been thinking hard as to how I can best take advantage of the disease so that I can learn from it and try to become a better person.

Before I was diagnosed with cancer, those closest to me often heard me say that people make it hard for me to like them. I was, and still am I guess, a rather cynical person. But now, I’m finding that people are going to make it hard for me not to like them. One of the first things that I have learned since my disease is how awesome and full of love some people are.

Most, hopefully, are loved by someone, whether it be it romantic, familial, or friendly love. For most of us, the love is always there in various degrees: we tend to feel it more when there is a reason–new relationship, new birth, the holidays, etc.–but we always know it’s there even if we’re not thinking about it. Mostly, I believe, we just expect love to be there, like air. I, personally, have never spent one minute of my life without being loved. Unfortunately, I never thought about it too much–I just took it for granted.

However, even though we are loved, it seems that most of us, unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective, go through life without receiving unbelievable, repeated selfless exuberant acts and testimonies of love unless, maybe, we are lying in a casket during our funeral memorial. I, far from lying in a casket, have seen these unbelievable, repeated selfless exuberant acts and testimonies of love by my family, friends, and acquaintances–too many to list here–and I am very thankful for them. I am also thankful to my cancer for giving cause for these acts and testimonies to be expressed.

I still have much to learn about the disease that chose me against my will–and I still have much to learn from it. But what I have already learned has changed my life, which makes me look forward to what I have yet to learn. And I am very thankful for that.

It’s Lymphoblastic!

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It’s hard for me to write under the best of conditions–I’m a pronounced procrastinator who always can rationalize away a reason to write. But now that I’m down with cancer, I have both the best opportunity to, as well as the best reason not to, write.

I have much to write about–anyone does, really. But in the short period of time since my diagnosis on November 30, 2009, with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and the Philadelphia Chromosome abnormality, I have accumulated many things in my mind that I would like to record for my own self-interest. For example, I would like to log down the emergency room scene when I was told about my disease, including the moaning drunk outside my pulled curtain (as cliche as it may sound), to capture what I remember and felt about that experience. I would also like to describe what it’s like to be stuck in a hospital bed in a room where everyone who enters has to wear a mask. It becomes rather surreal when I had multiple visitors sitting around me trying to communicate through their eyes. And of course I will want to try to explain how the treatment and various medications are affecting me physically and mentally. Yes, lots to discuss as long as I am unable to convince myself not to write.

But what I really want to acknowledge first and will discuss in my next post, what I want to make sure anyone who reads this understands, is that I very quickly have become truly thankful for my disease.