8 Years, and Doing What You Have To Do

It's a bit of a startling fact to realize that I've now been undergoing treatment as a cancer patient for more than 8 years. I was first diagnosed with neuroblastoma on May 1, 2003, and today it is June 9, 2011. That's almost half my life. It's the time a student goes through college and med school; no one can argue that I have not gotten quite the education out of this! In fact, I've been at CHOP for longer than some of my nurses. Almost a scary thought.
But the thing about living my life like this is that this is my life. This is what I know, this is what I've dealt with for a long time, this is how I live. Is this how I would choose to live had I been given the choice? No, I really can't picture that being the case. But is this how I would choose to live had I been given this exact life over again? Yes, because I have learned to adapt and turn this into my own brand of normal. I don't know anything else; I have never experienced another life that I can compare this one to. That's why I can deal with things the way I do: just by living this life and taking the necessary steps to ensure that I can keep on living it.
That's what it's all about for me. Doing what I have to do. I cannot imagine that if anyone else was in my position, they'd do it any differently than I have. At a young age, I was given the choice of obeying my doctor and my parents, or making them force me to obey them, or suffer by not getting help for the disease that was slowly taking over. Really, all three of those options would have been painful! So it seemed like the best choice was to go with the one that made it as painless as possible: obeying my doctor and my parents as they told me to try this test and get that checked out. When I was finally diagnosed, it just made sense to keep doing what they told me, because they still knew what was best. Every single one of my reactions to anything that's ever happened to me is the result of me thinking that it just made sense. For me, I do what I have to do to continue my life, in every sense of the word.