Shit I’m grateful for -- Grace, grit, and gratitude
Cancer is a gift and breast cancer is wrapped in pretty pink ribbon (with touches of teal and lime for my fellow stage 4 homies, gotta represent!). It’s a gift that we didn’t ask for, we can’t return, we can’t re-gift to someone we dislike (not that we would), and we can’t just toss it out during some fervent spring cleaning session. But still, it’s a gift.
Nah, I’m just fucking with y’all. It’s not a gift. It sucks. If it taught you grace, fine. If you like grits, holla at me (Southern born and bred). But gratitude? Because of cancer? I’m not so sure. I’ll give it a shot though. I present to you 10 reasons to be grateful to breast cancer.
1. Forgetfulness: You can tell me a joke and I’ll laugh. You can tell it again a month later and I’ll laugh as hard as I did the first time, thinking it’s new. Chemo brain is real and long lasting but it can be a positive thing (I may be single handedly supporting the Post-It note industry, for example).
2. Underbelly, Young Survivor Coalition, MetUp, METAvivor, etc. So many people going through the same thing, and we have all met some amazing people due to this fucked up disease. It’s important to not feel so alone and no one outside of this gets it.
3. Creativity: When you have exhaustion, you have to learn ways around it. You allow yourself to buy convenience foods or order out or hire help. You may even find extra creative ways to be lazy, such as playing the cancer card to get out of anything you don’t want to do. Isn’t it nice to have the creativity to use cancer for living life however you want?
4. Kiss-My-Ass attitude: It’s so nice to be able to say I really don’t fucking care what strangers think. Some of that may have come from age or elsewhere, but pretty sure cancer plays a role here. I’mma do what I want and if you don’t like it, kiss my ass.
5. Cooperation: Raising a three year old is tough. Doing it while living with stage 4 breast cancer is extra tough. But I’ve learned to go along with a lot of what he wants because it’s easier on me. I pick my battles. If he wants to go play in the mud, I get dirty with him. I can totally cooperate with him on breakfast choices when donuts are involved. Movies at bedtime? Let’s do this.
6. Appreciation of the moment: The past is behind me. I have no clue what the future holds. I don’t see another choice besides living in the moment. People meditate for years before they figure this shit out, all it took for me was the “gift” of cancer. (See? I wrote that without rolling my eyes too hard….)
7. New boobs: Hey I got a ‘free’ boob job, right? Never mind that they are all franken-boobs. Never mind that I had to be bald and sick first. Never mind that the coconut shell expanders hurt. Never mind that 8 years the cancer is back and outside of my fake boobs now. New. Boobs. Save the tatas. NO. Save the women with cancer. Save the stage 4 lifers. Fuck the killer boobs. Um….was I supposed to be grateful for something here?
8. Crap. Shit. Poop. I get to spend a lot of time with my cell phone reading facebook and stuff because of super fun side effects. To shit or not to shit. Apparently about half of us in stage 4 treatment have ‘loose booty’ (aka the trots, the shits, when you walk under a ladder and you feel something splatter, diarrhea!) and the other half are stopped up/constipated/carrying loads of bricks in the belly. Eww gross, why did I even put that in this article? Because it’s reality. I may make cancer look pretty but it’s not. Deal with it. We have to.
9. Everyone who loves me: Although some friends disappear, some stay. I lost my mom (to this stupid fucking disease) but I still have my hubby. My friends are great and I love feeling the love from them. Of course, that would probably still be nice without cancer so maybe this one doesn’t count.
10. Real talk. I can be blunt. I’m okay with that. I’m going to die. You’re going to die. I can be grateful for things in life with or without cancer. Go back and read the first letter of each list item and have a good fucking day.
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Please Read.You have a great post here, Have anyone here know Goji Berries... yes... I tried those too.For my health conditions, Those sweet, red berries seemed to help, but only during the time when I consumed them. I don't want to take a drug for the rest of my life, so why would I want to take a natural supplement everyday for the rest of my life (although Goji berries are very tasty and are highly nourishing). To me this was not a cure either (and I'm LOOKING for the CURE).
Up to that point, I hadn't found a cure. I felt like a young jumbled mess. I continued to have extreme pain, but continued on my path to healing. I started to focus on myself and not everyone else. When I was a young adult, I took on too much responsibility out of a sense of obligation. This was no longer healthy for me, so I resigned from all my projects and groups. Those days to come were the best [and worst] days. I took a lot of time off work, yet begun to feel so extremely exhausted. Many health professionals "diagnosed" me with adrenal fatigue & Hiv,Prostate Cancer so my situation was annoying then I keep searching for permanent cure online that's when I came to know of Dr jekawo herbal doctor hands whom god has blessed with ancestral powers and a gift to heal people with disease like .Cancers,Alzheimer's disease,HPV,Men & Women Infertility,Melanoma, Mesothelioma, Diabetes, Multiple myeloma, Parkinson's disease,Neuroendocrine tumors,Herpes, Hiv/Aids,Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,, chronic diarrhea, COPD, Hepatitis... So I made a purchase of his herbal medicines and I have been watching my health for 6 years now and I actually confirmed that his herbal medicines are a permanent cure and I'm so happy that I came to know of his herbal healings.You can contact Dr Jekawo herbal doctor Email: drjekawo@gmail.com if you went through exactly what I go through in terms of health conditions because to be honest there is more to learn about natural herbs than medical drugs.
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