I had some much-needed long talks with my parents about what kind of future I might be able to have. I'm at some kind of crossroads right now, and I'm not sure what it is. I just feel like something's going to happen, and soon. Something has to change. I can't keep sitting around like a lump all day, but I can't go out and do just anything with all of my health issues. As much as I love learning, I can't honestly say that I love college. When I'm healthy, the classes are too easy. When I'm sick, the workload is too hard. There is no middle ground. I'm either bored or I'm drowning. What to do from here?
Everyone around me is getting jobs; my friends all have jobs or internships, and even my brothers are now working. This should be the time when I'm out there, getting an internship in New York City at some book publisher with the connections from my college, or the time when I take a semester abroad to Florence, studying art history. Instead, I'm sitting here on the couch at 1:04 am, just as I have been for the last 12 hours. It's not my choice, exactly. It's just what I have available. I can't go out and get a job - jobs need schedules, and I don't have the ability to commit to a schedule. Same with internships. I don't have the physical strength for long workdays, or grunt-work. I can't go off to another country, especially not by myself, in case something happened and I needed to get to a hospital immediately. Of course there are hospitals everywhere, but I am an anomaly; I don't respond to normal treatments well. I need high-tech equipment.
What are my options? There are so many things I want to do, or would like to do, or wouldn't mind doing; but none of those things are things that I can do right now. I need to find something that I can do. I have a million interests, but what is going to be able to fit my life?
I told my parents that I sometimes feel like the first astronaut, or Christopher Columbus: I'm going into uncharted territory. I am a new species. I am a long-term survivor with cancer. This has never really been possible before now. It used to be that, when you were diagnosed with cancer, you were given a death sentence. I know that. I also know that it doesn't have to be that way anymore with the incredible advances in medicine and technology we have achieved. But even then, the survivors are people who were diagnosed with cancer, fought their battle through chemo or radiation or other therapy, and then went into remission. They are long-term survivors after cancer. There aren't many like me who know that their cancer is probably going to be long-term. This is something my doctors and my family realized a few years into my battle. The absolute best we can hope for is still remission; but the more probable hope is that my cancer remains stable and treatable as a long-term disease. It is something I am most likely going to have to live with for a very long time, with little hope of remission but without such high risk of death. If that's the best I can get, I'll take it. But people don't know how to deal with this yet. My doctors don't; my parents don't; I certainly don't. How can you expect others to know how to deal with it if we don't know? There are no resources available to me. I have to forge my own path. It's scary as anything, to feel so alone. My faith in God helps - the belief that I am not really alone. But He is not the one who can live my life. I have to do that, and I have to figure out how to make the best of it. I'm going to have to figure out what to do from here; and I will. I can't see it yet, but I will.
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