These are just some thoughts that have flown around my mind the past several months that I felt like writing down and sharing. Some of you may know, but some of you may not that I was diagnosed with Stage III Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma when I was 10 years old. It had spread to my lymph nodes in my neck, my lower spine, and my left leg. We caught it early and I was one of the very lucky ones – after a year and a half of intensive chemotherapy, I am nearly 12 years cancer-free at this point!
I didn’t realize the impacts that cancer would have on my life until more than a decade later. Of course it was this horrible, scary experience where I feared for my life, but it had has a profoundly positive influence on who I am today, and I’m actually glad that it happened.
I realize now that it’s made me a pretty fearless lover of life. I view life like this: I could get hit by a car crossing my street in front of my apartment in Honolulu tomorrow, I could even get diagnosed with a second cancer at any given moment, I could drop dead from an aneurism right now. I realize that’s a pretty morbid way of looking at life, but any sort of near death experiences jolts you into consciousness to realize: why the hell am I not doing what I love to be doing every single day? I don’t have time to waste!
Having had cancer has forced me, for better or worse, to live every day like it’s my last. That means doing exactly what you want to be doing with your life at every second of the day. It means being selfish – with your time, with your wants, needs, desires… putting you and your happiness first. Selfishness can be an ugly thing, but a healthy dose has given me a newfound appreciation of myself and my needs.
As far as traveling goes, surviving cancer made me a fearless wanderer. I got through 16 months of intensive chemotherapy. My cells mutated and were on a suicide mission to kill myself! I had to endure surgeries, countless blood transfusions, losing my hair, unimaginable pain, missing out on school and living life at such a critical time in my childhood, and all of the hard days of suffering in between all of that. And I freaking beat it. I can easily jet off and spend 3 months backpacking through foreign lands by myself. Piece of cake!
It’s also just given me a new perspective on fear. We hear about these terrorist attacks throughout Europe, harassment in the Middle East, kidnapping in Latin America and that nagging fear stops us from going there. But anything can happen at any moment anywhere in the world! You can’t let this obscure, abstract fear of some random thing happening in a foreign country stop you from seeing the world. Again, you could get in a car crash tomorrow morning on your way to work. Helloooo, people! Why are you so scared of going to Morocco!? We tiptoe through life hoping to safely make it to death. Be a risk taker instead!
I share these thoughts in the hope that they will maybe help one person see things from a new perspective. I’m one of the lucky ones to have survived such a life-threatening illness that kills hundreds of thousands every year. I’m still alive, and I intend to make every second of the rest of my life, however much time I may have left, worth it 100%.
