Once a survivor, you never forget it

I had a little time this morning, so I perused over my older posts, particularly the ones starting around March 2006. It was a life changing time for me, as I was stricken with a stage IV glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor.

You can go find them yourself if you have an interest, but suffice to say, it was a very dark time for me. I didn’t know anything about the subject and being thrown into the thick of it was a shocking blow to myself and everyone around me. I have always been pretty healthy and at the time was teaching martial arts. That all came to an abrupt stop as I was thrown into the fight of my life. I had the best doctors and was given all the treatments anyone knew about GBMs at the time.

I immediately looked up survival rates, and they were not encouraging. Survival rates tend to favor the young. This is for a variety of reasons, such as better over all health and a less developed cancer. The worst prognosis is glioblastoma multiforme with 5 year survival at 13% for ages 20-44. Only 1% for those aged 55-64. Holy crap, that’s me!

I wanted to know everything I could about what had invaded my body, but everything I read was usually dark and sinister. There was not a lot of hope, so in an effort to lessen the impact of my prognosis, I just stopped reading about it. A number of people I read about, some of them very famous, had died from the same thing, so although I outlasted them, I was still living in my world, three months at a time, for almost four years.

I didn’t know it then, but the surgeon told my wife I only had maybe six months of life left. She didn’t tell me for almost three years, and set about to do everything she knew to make a liar out of the doctor. Well, nine years and two months later, I am still here. I don’t know all the reasons why, but everything she did and the attitude she kept, has surely done me no harm.

There isn't much in the way of statistics for surviving longer than five years, but if I only had a 1% chance of making it that far, what are the odds of going beyond this? The few anecdotal stories put out by survivors showed that many still have issues, so I appear to be in a category by myself and well off the curve, and leaves me with few words to add. I can't forget what I have been through, and the small dent in the back of my skull is a daily reminder of what has happened. One sure thing is once you are a survivor, it will always be a part of you.

I can tell you that in the past nine years, I have lived more than I ever dreamed possible:

• I have watched both of my boys get married.
• I became a grandfather, and now have three wonderful grand kids in two different countries.
• We gutted our home and remodeled it both inside and out into the one we wanted.
• I have made several new life-long friends, for which I am grateful.
• I was here to say goodbye to my younger brother, who died six years ago.
• I bought my first Harley and began riding motorcycles again.
• I’ve traveled to a number of places to which I have never been.
• Uncluttered my mind from the silliness of things like religion and concentrated on the things which matter in this world, because in truth I know now it’s all we have.
• I workout 8 to 10 hours a week and am in better shape than before the tumor.
• I appreciate each day as a gift, and try to be better at what I can do.
• Shared all of these precious milestones with the woman who has in all probability saved my life.