Cancer Survival Skills

As anyone whose been diagnosed with cancer knows, your first label becomes, “Cancer Victim.” When I was diagnosed with an incurable Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I’d never heard of that form of cancer, but I understood the word, “victim,” very well. It seems the label of victim had been given to me long before cancer arrived in my life. Still, my experience told me that I didn’t want to be a, “Cancer victim,” too, so I made up my mind to change my label to, “Cancer Survivor.”

I knew it would be hard to do, but chemotherapy soon became a normal part of my daily routine. As the victim I’d come to be, I was able to tolerate chemotherapy very well. I never even lost my hair, so I was able to smile stoically at all those people who pitied me as much as I pitied myself.

Remission, on the other hand, put me in a strange position. To be in, “Cancer Remission,” would not mean I was cured of anything, but that I’d be living on borrowed time, because you see, incurable means I’d have to wait and see how many borrowed days would be given to me. Personally, I never liked being between labels, and limbo made me feel unstable. The only way I could find any peace of mind was to change my label from one who’d be, “in remission,” to one who’d survived. So, I made up my mind that I’d become, “A cancer survivor,” for as long as I survived on borrowed time.

A year went by, then two and three, and by the time four years had gone by, I woke up one morning to find that I was still alive. “How long can time be borrowed by me,” I asked myself incredulously? Suddenly, that’s when it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I could be, “Cancer free.” I don’t know why, but the label never entered my mind until I began to think about all the labels I’d made up my mind to wear on my forehead in life.

So, the way I developed my cancer survival skills was to change my labels as time went by, until I was prepared to see that my destiny would lead me to the label I chose to be. With this in mind, all the time, it was then that I made up my mind to become, “Cancer free.”

Today, I don’t do the, “cancer thing,” because you see, that’s what being, “Cancer free,” means. So my next label will need to exclude the word cancer completely and when I make up my mind, I’ll finally be, “free,” to just be me, who will always be cancer free.

I hope that these cancer survivor tips will be helpful for you, but if you need me to spell it out, I’ll sum them up for you.

1. Change your victim role to a survivor by believing that only you, through God, has that power.
2. Once you’ve become one who is in, “Cancer Remission,” don’t sit and wait for time to end, in limbo. Make up your mind to move through this phase quickly, and go stick a sticker on your head that sais, “I am a cancer survivor.”
3. Once that label wears out and gets too faded to see, change the label to say, “I am cancer free.” Wear it for a while, just to let people know, and then when you get tired of the cancer role, take it off your forehead and tear it up into pieces. Make another label in big, bold pring that simply describes your label as one who is, “Free,” and wear it for eternity.

Side note:

Remember, we believe what we see, and we see what we believe. Since this is true, be aware of the labels you wear on your forehead.