Happy Second Birthday to Me
Well we’ve hit the year mark since the day I felt light headed, flew backwards in my chair, passed out, and seized as Amy watched in horror. I’m super proud to say that I’m still here with so much of who I am in tact. In fact I’m a better man because of it. I was told that there is a tradition of viewing your day of diagnosis as your Second birthday (there was some debate as to when it was because I wasn’t technically diagnosed until after my surgery…but the seizure is certainly when everything changed). The second birthday is a reminder to celebrate the gift of life and to reflect on the trials that make you who you are. Plus it’s an excuse to be the center of attention for another day out of the year. I have reached that day, finally, and it was, I think, fitting that I ended my latest cycle of Chemo the same day.
As I’ve spent some moore time reflecting this past week (on this past year), I thought about the ways I’ve stayed the same. I still think you shouldn’t “take anything personally”. I still think you should “love your neighbor as yourself”. I still think that “faith, family, and relationships are the most important things in this world”. What’s changed the most in me is the ways I now consciously approach these core values. In a lot of ways, I believed these things, but they weren’t necessarily reflected in my choices and actions before this year. A lot of that had to do with my own spiritual battle of whether or not I was “worthy”, which similar to “justice” is another amorphous idea, but for the sake of simplicity, let me just say that this year has helped to confirm to me that I am in fact “worthy”. What I learned is that being “worthy” really has nothing to do with me or what I accomplish or what people tell me I am (or I tell myself), it really just starts with letting go and allowing myself to just be the things I believe, and as the poster for the film “American Beauty” said, to “Look closer”. As I “look closer”, I see that I have no choice but to let go. What I knew right away when I was diagnosed is that it would take a miracle to survive this…and I’m pleased to report that all I’ve seen this year is one miracle after the next. What’s great about that perspective is that as I look back I realize that miracles have been happening around me my entire life and that gives me hope for a long future. Knowing all this allows me to live without regret. Thanks for sticking with Amy and I. Can’t wait to see what “Year Two” brings us.
I’m not turning 2, it’s just my second birthday of 2012.
Marking “Year One” with gratitude,
Alex
What an amazing journey this year since diagnosis has been. Celebrating YOU on this anniversary. Celebrating miracles–large and small. Celebrating life–precious and fragile.
Loving thoughts and prayers from the pacific northwest.
Not glad to have had to go this particular journey with you, but glad I was in a position to be there. It has been an amazing year in terms of seeing God at work and experiencing His kingdom in the people who have supported and cared for you through prayer and a myriad of tangible gifts and actions. It has been my joy to see you respond to bad and good news with such a hopeful perspective and to watch you reach out and care for others facing similar challenges. So proud. Love you, Mom
Thinking of you today. Unsure whether the sentiment should be, “happy birthday” “congratulations”, or maybe just “a time to reflect”.
Happy birthday, Alex! I agree with you that the day of the first symptom is the “second birthday” because that is the day that my husband decided he was going to live through whatever was happening to him. He actually got his official brain cancer diagnosis on May 26, 2006, the day after his 55th birthday. His doctor held off because he didn’t want to give him the news on his birthday. But it didn’t really matter because he had his first seizures on Feb.20, 2006, my birthday. We had a lot of things that happened on special days during his 6-year battle, including his passing on Thanksgiving Day 2011. We just always felt that they were just one more day in the fight and were determined to fight that much harder for every day we could get!