So I’ve been pre-occupied the last few days. I don’t know what it is with me. I’m just in a state of awe and limbo and it’s a great feeling. So let me enlighten you what’s transpired over the last week.

The tour de france started and of course I’m rooting for lance armstrong for his number 6. I went out and bought his autobiography and finished it in two days. Seeing as I work and go to school this was an incredible feet. It an amazing book and I think I liked it over any other auto biography because 90% of what he spoke of I could relate. Cancer, life everything. It was unbeilevable how he basically wrote down what I was thinking. So I’m rooting around other websites and what do you know, same thing. So many cancer survivors share my thoughts EXACTLY and wow.

I’m just happy to be alive. I realise now that once in my life that I could be dead. OzweegoVille may never existed, EVER. I would never be the nine-teen year old sitting before you, paying all of my bills, going to college and getting my bachelors before the age of 21. Never. I’m just in a state of awe.

I’m also happy to report that I’m not the only cancer survivor waking up in cold sweats with nightmares of past things done. And I’m not the only one that had arms of pincushions. He stated once that he had to get ready for an MRI usually I had these weekly. This is where the barium had to be dranken and it’s miserable. Lances girlfriend at the time asked to drink some and I thought to myself, that’s what I want. Somebody that is more then willing to drink barium so they know exactly what I’m going through. wow. This book, my life and the lives of others that I’ve read about the last few days makes me feel so inspired and so incredibly happy. Even moreso then I’ve ever been, even in the last few months of my life.

So I finished this book, it was an excellent, well written book about cancer, survival and the little things that cancer survivors talk about. It was neat to know that lance armstrong, myself and countless, countless other survivors still have their cathaders(sp?). The tube that went into the chest to retrieve blood and such. I kept mine in a pee cup(how fitting I know) and that life had changed once it was removed.

Once it was removed it was as if a limb of me had been severed and yet a new found of hope was renewed. It was an awesome feeling and myself and countless others have experienced the same feeling.

In one part of the book when lance first his chemo he recieved a letter from somebody in the military telling him "you may not know it yet, but were the lucky ones". That was at the very beginning, and I’m so happy that lance wrote about it some more in the end. I think now more then ever it’s so incredibly true. Only a handful of people get to tell their tale of cancer and I’m one of them. Only a handful and I couldn’t agree more with the passage that he wrote. We are lucky.

Cancer has not made change the person I was, I was so young it only shaped me into the person I needed to be. Headstrong and knowledge hungry. It was a tool, and looking back now on how much it’s taught me about myself and my strengths and limitations. I wouldn’t give it back for anything. I’m glad others can relate to my story and I’m glad I can laugh about it here today. I realise now others weren’t so lucky and that I was fortunate.

I think I can honestly look at this post in my worst times of my life and just laugh. It’s an awesome feeling and I only wish I could share it with everybody I come across.

After completing the book I went online to see if maybe I could find some more information and I found out that lance divorced his wife in the book about 4 years after writing it. It was kind of like, wow. I was so attached to all of the charachters and to see they had split up was almost a shock. Kind of like the main charachter dieing at the end of a book, it’s something that is kind of an awkward weirdness. I don’t know. Perhaps I’m rambling.

Over the past week I’ve come to realise with reading, reflecting and communicating to others about my life and about how life tends to work itself out one step at a time.

I was given a second chance at life and I’m forever grateful.

I should be going. I think I may go to bed peacefully tonight.

take care all,
kc