Ten Silver Linings

If my cancer is, metaphorically speaking, a great big, roiling, tornado-spawning black rain cloud, then it may be time to think of some silver linings. I say that with some hesitation, however, as I don't want to be misinterpreted as embracing denial or toxic positivity. Silver linings do not make the black cloud disappear, but they do give me things to savor, be grateful for, or even revel in while the storm rages.

A tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma (public domain image)

Some silver linings are best observed through the lens of dark humor; others are more suited to a general audience. I'll start with the latter. 

1. I get to spend more time with my family, particularly Gita, the best daughter in the world, whom I now get to see every day.
2. I've been able to reconnect with old friends. I've heard of cancer ghosting, but I haven't experienced any of it myself. Instead, my friends have rallied around to a truly heartwarming degree. 
3. I have lots of guilt-free reading time. I've read a lot of books in the last two months, and I have spent no time at all thinking I should really be doing something more productive.
4. I can eat as much as I want to. Having lost a lot of weight in the last year (cancer will do that to you), I am now being encouraged to eat as much as I want to. I am not, however, being allowed to eat as little as I want to. If I forget to eat, Gita will show up at my elbow with something caloric. How many other people can claim to have gained weight while on chemo?
5. I've finally learned to live in the now. My time horizon is very short these days, and I really have to just take each day as it comes—exactly as they say one should.
6. I'm accumulating chemo plants. As mentioned in a previous post, I've decided to reward myself with a plant for each round of chemunotherapy. In general, I'm loosening up about spending money for things that make life easier, healthier, or happier.
7. I have the mother of all excuses. I don't have to do anything, go anywhere, or see anyone if I don't feel up to it. This particular point has a dark side to it, though, as I have not been able to help my siblings take care of my parents lately.
8. I get all the attention, medication, and validation I need from the medical community. I mention the validation here especially because after a year of progressing illness and a frustrating round of medical appointments and tests, I was beginning to worry that I was going to be dismissed as a hypochondriac. My GI doctor told me she thought I had irritable bowel syndrome; my insistence that it was something more serious made little or no impression. The actual diagnosis has been a severe blow, but it has also been validating. 
9. I am no longer afraid of Alzheimer's Disease. My mother has Alzheimer's, and I had developed a healthy fear of it in recent years and begun assiduously tracking relevant medical advances and doing brain exercises. Now I know that I probably will not live long enough to get Alzheimer's. Similarly, I am now much less worried about old age in general. Instead, I have decided to embrace new signs of aging as they come. Every new gray hair and every new wrinkle will be one more gray hair or one more wrinkle that I have lived long enough to acquire. 
10. People have finally stopped telling me that it could be worse. When I experienced trauma as a younger person, I found it both strange and hurtful how many people would dismiss my pain because So-and-So had it far worse. It seemed as though, for some bizarre reason, only the most unfortunate person on earth was due any compassion. I am not in fact the most unfortunate person on earth, but mesothelioma is bad enough that no one so far has tried to pull the old "it could be worse" trick on me.