That's sick

I hear this a lot:

Friend: "HOW are you doing?"

T.C.M. (that's me): "Feeling pretty good, thanks.  How about you?"

Friend: "Oh, I have a cold, but hey - that's not as bad as cancer."

As of this posting, there appears to still be no cure for the common cold, and in my case, there is no "cure" for multiple myeloma.  Whether you are stricken with a cold, hobbled by a broken ankle, or doubled-over from the pain of passing a kidney stone - in that moment, for you, you are battling with a medical condition whose outcome is not necessarily known and whose course of action has yet to be charted or conquered.

When you are in the deepest throes of the cold, if you’re anything like me, it feels like you’ll never be better again (my nose will never stop running and I’ll never be able to breathe normally again).  Clearly a cold and cancer are not the same and clearly they are not comparable - but this is not a contest where one malady is “worse” than another when it comes to how it sucks.

One second before I was diagnosed (nearly 12 months ago - wow, that was fast), anything but cancer WAS the worst medical situation I had to deal with.  And on each occasion (cold, sprain or stone), it took over my life at that moment, it felt at times (the worst of times, clearly) that it wasn't going to get better, and I wasn't always sure what life would be like on the other side of the sickness.  Then I was diagnosed with cancer, and the bar was raised as to: how sick I could be, the complexities of how I was going to get better, and what the rest of my life would be like after that recovery.  Each time, we are saddled with a medical condition and must muster our defenses (immuno and psychological), to give ourselves and our medical team the best chances for the best outcomes.  Bed-rest, crutches, lots of cranberry juice or chemotherapy - these are the hardware of science that combine with the software of our hearts and our minds to all merge for a cure.

My cancer doesn't eclipse your cold (or surgery or stone), it's just another medical challenge that our bodies need to fight and eventually vanquish.  I think it is safe to say that I am on the other side of this, that the light is pretty bright (the light of hope; not the headlight of an oncoming train), and that with the help of a lot of supportive people and being a patient patient - the containment status seems to be increasing more and more toward 100%.