Smiting of the Gods

I awoke just now at exactly 1:10 am, fearful of what will happen the next morning.

You see, how perfect it is, in the midst of this health crisis that has turned my life upside down and that of all my children and especially my wife, that we have to add a little extra just to make it more interesting. I speak, of course, of the Smiting of the Gods.

I mentioned in a previous blog that things, in a rash, suddenly started breaking. En mass. First our freezer got smitten, then our dryer, then both toilets full of poop and absolutely unable to be unplunged, so if there was a number two in our future or our children, it was loading the car up and driving to an Express mart three miles away to do the deed. Luckily, we have a lot of boys who can pee outside like the dog.

Me with dead phone

The Gods were still angry, and our flat screen TV in Angela’s and my bedroom went next – Poof – and for no discernible reason, and why stop there: our internet router, that bulletproof deliverer of fast internet – suddenly turned flakey and lost connection about three times a day, meaning: I had to reboot it as many times. Not huge, but in the kids eyes, howls and, “Dad, the interest isn’t working again.” What could be worse? Still, it has to be replaced.

Well, the toilets were both plugged again, and did I mention I’m glad I have boys, and lets get another plumber in here, which we do, because there’s lots you can fudge and find a work-around and just live with, but not two toilets full of poop and unplungable and unflushable.

The season would not be complete if I didn’t mention that we ran out of heating oil and had no heat for five days. Luckily, the weather isn’t that cold (35 degrees Fahrenheit) and we have space heaters running all over the place, so no one is suffering. Still. We could get an oil delivery now but there’s a $225 extra charge, and they only deliver to Cato on Tuesday, so we can wait.

All this, though, causes another even bigger hardship: I have to get all the documentation and paperwork ready for a NY home energy assistance program named HEAP, and they of course want everything. Birth certificates for everyone, one month pay stubs for everyone who brings a nickle into the house in wages (my kids), etc. It’s hard getting all this together when your brain isn’t broken, torture when it is.

The refrigerator is leaking, but hopefully that’s not a big deal. It will do that mostly in the summer – there’s a trey in the back that fills with water and has to be emptied. Hopefully this being full in winter is not a bad omen.

We still have a land line of sorts with a cordless phone to take calls. Smitten, though that hasn’t worked for a few weeks, so its not a new smiting but still – it had to be taken care of. I just replaced it yesterday.

I seem to be forgetting something. I’m sure I’ll remember it once I publish this blog. That is, if my laptop is working and I am able to hit the Publish Button in WordPress.

What else can break? The sky is the limit. I may stay up all night because, if I fall asleep, I know something will break the next day. I live in fear.

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www.activechristianity.org

How Sweet It Is!

I think this brain thing is one of the craziest things I’ve ever been through in my entire life.

One day I lost everything and a month later – like five days ago – things turned around. Then I suddenly realized I had enough balance to – believe it or not –  pee like a boy.  It suddenly hit me in the moment: I think I can stand and do this. And guess what? I did!

The implication was clear: I was more stable. I still had to be careful, obviously, but something had changed.

Me Standing On My Own – Wow!

Then two days after that, I was able to take five well ordered steps across the kitchen from the refrigerator to the sink without my brain going crazy and throwing me to the left or right; I was slow and careful, but managed it.

And that’s how it all began. Walking again. It’s amazing. When you lose your mobility, you lose everything. It is difficult to describe exactly how much you lose. I think a number above 99 percent would be close.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no plans to go jogging or start taking square dancing classes. I walk always reaching for a surface; getting around the kitchen, I’ll run my fingers along the kitchen table for reference and will often coordinate my walking by first hanging onto the refrigerator door handle for absolute safety, let go, then walk about four steps to the kitchen sink area, where I’ll grab the counter. But still, I have walked. And I still use the walker to get around even in the house. I do not want to fall.

All this begs the question: what is happening up there in my brain? The answer is: I don’t know. Probably the tumors are dying (hopefully) and the inflammation is down (again, hopefully), so now my brain can switch back.

But it’s great to be up on my feet like a normal homo sapien. Don’t take it for granted. It’s wonderful.

On Depression

I’d like to talk about depression. I don’t feel like I am depressed, but I do think that I could very well be because, well, suddenly, in one day, I lost everything – which could lead a person to be just a bit down perhaps.

The thing is, I feel as if I’ve veered on the edge of depression a few times but managed to get through it. My faith helped me, and I understood to “humble yourself under the mighty hand of God,” which means not to fight it. When you start fighting it, you’re in for a long, hard and losing battle. Then you are depressed.

But I’ve found I have to keep working at it in a very practical way. It’s easy for me to lay in bed, still for a long time, listening to music on my Amazon Echo and enjoying a distress-free time. If I keep my head still, it doesn’t do trippy things – which sets off my stomach – and also find a good position that doesn’t activate my shingles. So laying in bed isn’t just a lazy thing, it’s a survival mechanism.

Still, it’s really not much of a life either. And here I have to make a decision. I have to force myself to do something, even if it’s risky. The other day Angela and I went to see the movie Searching, and I went for a car ride another time with a good friend. Went to my son’s soccer game also. Normal things.

Big deal you say, but it is a big deal. Life is what you make of it, and we make decisions every day that impact on our mental health. We can jump into life and live it – even if it’s in a wheelchair and at a low level – or we can wallow. So as long as I’m jumping in, I’m ok. Stop jumping, stop living, and start down the black hole.

It’s a sacrifice, but a good one. And like everything in life, its a decision I make. Please don’t get me wrong: everyone is different, and I’m only talking about what happens to work for me. But I wish everyone the best in this battle!

On Being Strong…

There are some comments that people make about me regarding my cancer that I don’t especially like, and here is one of them: “You are so strong to go through all this.”

This is not so.

I am a wimp. I can handle nothing. Upon the least adversary, I fold.

And yet, I am still standing, somehow.

I will tell you the secret of my strength. It is very simple: I just don’t have my own resources to fall back on in dealing with everything that has come my way, but other ones as well. This is good; the reality is that oftentimes situations are much more than we can handle and when they drag on day after day, it’s even worse. It can easily seem endless and dark.

But remember, cancer is as much mental as it is physical, and perhaps more. The problem is that by nature we are wired wrong, I believe. What do I mean by that? Well, all of us has a certain amount of fortitude and desire to be good, but in the pinch there are limits. We can only take so much adversary, and at some point our goodness also runs out. When we can take no more, we complain, and often loudly. We can also become bitter, which is the worse state a human being can be in. And if pushed too far, we become no longer good but positively bad, all our justifications notwithstanding.

The key is to get new wiring. Now wouldn’t that be great! I think that is what everyone longs for but never quite reaches.

This is where the New Testament comes in. It is a book that will positively confound your every assumption about life. Up is down, left is right, big is little. Read it rightly, and your mind will be at once expanded and blown apart.

Let me give you an example. These verses, written by Paul 2,00 years ago. have saved my life as much as the Gamma Knife treatments I got at Roswell:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships,in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.    2 Cor 12:9-11

Can you see it? Are you able to get it? Let’s just say that this is not a normal and human way of experiencing life. Who in the world delights in insults, hardships and difficulties? Go ask 100 people and see what answer you get. Of course you know what all 100 will answer. No one like adversary.

And yet Paul had it this way in truth and spirit – or he is a liar and fraud? You decide.

This is true Christianity, which is actually a help in all of life. I personally don’t need a dead religion of tradition and ritual nor a feel-good touchy-feely experience every Sunday that crashes on Monday. I need help in all the trials I am going through. I need a thorough re-wiring. I need the old ripped out and the new hooked up. I need to get new insides and above all, to be faithful to stick to the new and reject the old. Nothing else will do. Nothing else is Christianity. And nothing else helps.

That is the secret of my strength – which is actually Gods. It’s also completely free and the government can’t tax it! What a deal!

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https://activechristianity.org/

What This Blog is All About

About my condition

It’s a Funny Thing…

It is 2007 and I’m laying in a hospital bed and know the score: 80 percent of people with Esophageal Cancer are don’t make it to three years, and few make it to five years.

God speaks two things right into my heart: first, if I’m going to make it, it will only be if people pray for me and second, I have to be willing to take all the worse cancer treatments.

 

Now, not only did I make it to five years, but I made it to ten and then to eleven. And this is only because of you and your prayers. I am forever grateful. You have no idea!!!

Prayer, though, is a funny thing. Take my condition now. It’s pretty straight-forward: you can pray that I am completely healed of these tumors and that the bad symptoms that have left me a semi-invalid go away. That’s easy.

I did have a life before Cancer!  This is me in 2006 at Boldt Castle!

Or is it? The question is: what is the best thing for me? Let’s take my semi-invalid state: I can’t get out of bed by myself. I would give my last nickel at this point if I could just get up and go to the bathroom by myself; just to go outside and get the mail – how much is that worth? The world.

So, it’s obvious that we can pray that these symptoms go away, and soon. But then again, we can turn the entire question on its head: what if sitting in this bed and having others do everything for me is actually the best thing for me? What if it gives me time to think about my life and about God, softens me and transforms me? What if it helps me to get something rare in this world and like gold: patience. Isn’t that good?

That is why prayer is a funny thing. We really don’t know what to pray for. Looking back on my life, some things that I thought were the best for me turned out to be the worst and the worst things turned out to be the best. We really don’t know what is best for us. And Per Romans 8, we really don’t know what to pray for.

But still, pray that I can be healed, the symptoms go away and that everything I go through transforms me for Eternity. Then it’s all worth it!

Being in the Disabled World….

Angela and I went to see a movie today at Destiny USA, which is a huge mall in the heart of Syracuse. The movie was good – Searching – and it was great to be out and just do something normal. Anything normal these days is fantastic.

But it wasn’t normal at all, in one way. I was in a wheelchair. I was in the world of the disabled – a place I have never been my entire life.

You must understand, I know of this place, and quite intimately. My sister has Cerebral Palsy, so I grew up understanding a disability and all that that involves. I also grew up twirling her canes and jumping around on her crutches – it was great fun to have such toys to play with as a boy! Do you see the nice wheelchair that I am sitting in in the picture? That’s hers – she loaned it to me, and is it fantastic.

It turns out that now I am in a disabled state and out in the community. This is where life gets interesting, because its one thing to observe someone who is disabled from the position of a biped, and it’s another thing to be the disabled person yourself.

We can easily look down and despise all these accommodations. Many public places have those stupid doors that open with a button, and when you press the button it always opens way too slowly, and if you just want to get in without pressing the button, the door is too heavy to move. What a pain.

These doors are not a pain if you need them to open in order to get into the building at all. If they don’t work, there you sit, looking through the glass at the inside of the building while you are on the outside, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to get inside, unless some nice person happens to have mercy on you and open a door. There are nice people out there, but many just don’t care either.

Another example bipeds might disregard is seating in the movie theater. The one we were at had a cut-out space where I could park my wheelchair and watch the movie. Not a big deal, but without it what would I have done? Let’s say the theater was crammed with chairs and a narrow aisle between them, with no place to park the chair. What would I have done?

After the movie, we found a bathroom in this huge mall that was “Family Accessible.” Great. The bathroom happened to have three – I count three – grab bars to make transferring to the toilet safe and accessible. Someone who has never been in a chair can no appreciate such a setup. Having something solid to hang onto is a life-saver.

Then there was a minor detail at the food court. My wife and I ate at a table specifically designed for a wheelchair on one side. We could actually sit across from each other and eat, as opposed to me forcing my chair sideways at the end of a table in an awkward alignment. This is not huge, but it does make life a bit more comfortable.

I have to say, I never in my wildest dreams ever thought I’d see this side of life. It’s a real eye-opener.

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https://activechristianity.org/

What This Blog is All About

About my condition

Landing in Primordial Earth

Words are not sufficient to describe losing all functionality in a single day, and out of the blue at that.

I have mentioned this before, but would like to give you, an upright biped, an idea of what it is like, if you have an interest in knowing. It is like nothing else on Earth, when suddenly you can’t get out of bed to use the bathroom nor can you even go get a snack or drink on your own. And if an object is out of your reach, forget it. You have to ask for help with all this and, indeed, with everything.

Symbolic of my life now, but its a good life

It’s as if you have fallen through three levels to Primordial Earth (The name Middle Earth has already been taken by Tolkien) and land in a strange place where everything is lived in a different context. Formerly, you ran around with thoughts in your head about how you were going to organize the day, where you had to be when and for who, and what you had to accomplish in the day to keep your life from not falling apart completely – bills paid, kids fed, garbage taken to the dump, animals de-wormed etc.

All that is gone. You live life now concerned about your hydration and your bowels, and a big part of the day is taking the right meds at the right time. You have a big pill box – four layers deep, not just Morning and Evening either – and this you live by. You think about your tube feeding, how long you have to be on it each day to get enough calories – and are you getting enough calories?

And then there are the nurses. Can anyone tell me why all nurses are concerned about your bowels? I think they all have a primal complex about these things that only Freud can explain. I know several who were positively excited that my pee was a light color. I really don’t get them.

Along these lines, I’ve heard the poop talk so much I’m determined to have the sleekest, best bowels in all of Central New York. I actually went shopping yesterday and the most important thing on my list was prune juice. You know life is going downhill when you highly value prune juice.

It’s a world of small frustrations not known to normal, upright mortals. If a candy in a nice wrapper falls on the floor, I am dead. I can look at the candy, and it can look and me, and we can go back and forth for hours but I can’t do anything to get it. If something blocks my wheelchair in the hallway, I’m stuck unless someone helps me.  I can see a blanket across the room but can’t get it.

(Don’t get me wrong. My family is top notch and takes very good care of me. It’s just that these are obstacles we face.)

It is a world where you don’t accomplish much in the day except staying alive. You are on a feeding tube 14 hours a day. (My weight is 132; in the depths of Chemo in 2007 I was 137. When I sit on a hard surface, I can feel the bones in my butt. Listen up, ladies: be thankful that you have padding on your butt. It’s a good thing.)

Its a world where you are taken out of the world.  There are no schedules, and you don’t have to be anyplace.  Ever play croquet, and you put your ball up to another and Wham, you send the other fellow’s poor ball flying?  It’s as if I’ve been sent with a big WHAM right out of the yard – indeed, deep into the woods, lost.  Just sent.

It’s a world where getting outside with the trees and huge, blue Fall sky is like dropping acid. And if you get a visitor, life is really good. If someone walks you down the road, you feel as if you have just crossed off the most important task on the To Do list that you had in your previous life. Riding in a car is epic.

It’s a world of staying out of pain.  Pain is always bad, and you have to stay out ahead of it and manage your meds with some finesse.  In the midst of my brain tumor, I got shingles from another tumor in my left side  that activated the dormant virus in my body.  All this was very poor planning on my part.

It’s a good life, though. Don’t get me wrong. And no feeling sorry for me. I am a king. I have all the friends in the world and a fantastic wife and family. I wouldn’t have it any other way (well, I would like to walk to the bathroom by myself, but I’m content with my lot in life – very content.)

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https://activechristianity.org/

What This Blog is All About

About my condition

On Being Dragged Back In…

[Per What This Blog is All About, I am here trying to give you an idea of what its like living with Stage IV Esophageal Cancer, assuming that you have an interest in the subject.]

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I have had two goals in the last eleven years: 1) To Serve God Wholeheartedly and 2) To stay out of the cancer world.

Let me recap my story.

Our family in 2008 just after Chemo

The date is 2006 and I have just finished a Master’s Degree in Health Systems Administration, got a better job as a manager at the hospital where I worked, and we just had our eight baby, Timothy. We can say it was going well in an Earthly sense but  four months later I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, underwent a huge surgery (my stomach is behind my heart now) and then underwent six weeks of massive chemo and radiation.

From this, we can see that sickness and cancer in particular disrupts ones life. This was a massive disruption; I had to quit my job and had a difficult multi-year recovery. At about the fourth year, I actually felt good enough to get a little part-time job taking disabled individuals out into the community. This was totally out of character for me; according to my DNA, I am a nerd, the Computer Guy, and would generally rather deal with technology than people. But it was good to be working again, at least doing something.

Still, it was a job, and I was working, and living life. Scans were coming back clear, and I remember at year six or seven, I was feeling good enough such that I wondered if I could possibly go back to work full-time.

That never happened. In year seven, 2014, I had my first re-occurrance, a spot in my lower left lobe. We ended up doing seven months of Chemo from Hell. To this day I know that that chemo wasn’t normal chemo: it was mixed in the third level of hell by demons and then sold to my doctor, to be given to me every Monday through my IV (port). I’m sure of it. Besides this, there was also a surgery to take out the tumor as well and a six week recovery.

As in 2007, my life was completely disrupted. I somehow managed to keep my little part-time job; I was too stubborn to let it completely upend everything as in 2007, but it pretty much did on a daily basis. I was back in the Cancer World, and big time. How do you know you are back in the cancer world? Well, you end up with a feeding tube – which I had, my second one.

The good news is that it ended, and I started living life again. I was not the same, though; there was no thought of going back to work full-time. My body had been beat up again, but still: I was out, and that in itself was great.

I had two more re-occurrances, but they were easy. Two more spots in my lung but Cyberknife treatments were able to take care of them. I could live life and get treatments at the same time, and the effects were not so bad: just some fatigue, as always. Fatigue is just a given in my life.

I got dragged back in to the cancer world again in 2017 big time, but in a way I didn’t expect. I had a CEA tumor marker that kept going up, so we did every test known to man but found no tumor. I was thoroughly exhausted by the end of 2017, and in 2018 we started it all up again when a tumor in my side was indeed cancer (biopsy in October 2017 said no), which led us to two weeks of radiation in April of 2018.

There is a backdrop to all this: I have eight kids and during this time, and not only kids but teenagers; at one time we had five teenagers in the house. So I really didn’t have time for all this cancer crap; I had a lot to be engaged in my life, and cancer was definitely a distraction. Also, we must remember that when my life was disrupted, so was theirs. It affected everyone.

Now we get to the good part. It’s 2018 and I’m out. I figure if I get dragged back in, they will find something on a scan and start up with some sort of Chemo from Hell. And, yes, that can happen at any time – just one bad scan and I’m back in it again.

But that’s not what happened. It came in a way I could never have dreamed of. It led to something perhaps even worse than Chemo from Hell: near complete disability.

This is the story. Angela and I have just had a 25^th wedding anniversary celebration on August 25^th of this year. I felt great at the party; of course I always deal with fatigue and was dealing with Shingles, so it wasn’t perfect, but still. I was living large, you can say.

The next day, though, I was dizzy and all the time. That is weird, I thought. I thought I might be dehydrated and fixed that but the next day was the same. I stopped my meds – perhaps that was the problem. (I was on some strong as-needed meds.) Still dizzy. I started slurring my speech at times but didn’t realize it, and when my wife told me, a light went off in my head.

I had to do something about this and not just anything: I had to go to the ER. You know things are going downhill when you have to use the ER, but I knew I could get a quick scan there without waiting two weeks for an appointment with my doctor. It was happening again. I was being dragged right back into the cancer world I had so wanted to stay out of. But I knew I had to go.

(To all you nurses, I know I should have gone sooner, but I also knew I wasn’t having a stroke. How did I know? I knew, just like I knew in 2007 that I had cancer before I was diagnosed. I knew.)

That was the start of it all. Then a week and a half later I lost all ability to care for myself. Suddenly, my life had changed, and radically. This was not to be a light Cyberknife affair where I could still live life and get treatments; no, it would be all encompassing. As in 2007 and 2014, I would eat, sleep and breath cancer. It would define my life, at least for the time being. And yes, I ended up with another feeding tube – my third – so when that happens, you know you’re deep in it.

What can we learn from all this? Sickness and cancer disrupts ones life, upends it completely in ways that are hard to imagine. But the good news is that it does end: we go into the cancer world, and we come out. Yes, I am looking forward to coming out of it this time – very much so!

So, God willing, I look forward to the days of just being boring old Dave Stahl, living my life on a very practical level: driving teenagers around (my destiny in life, it’s what I was born to do), trying to find money to feed my young, teenage boys every month, keeping the house from falling down around us. It’s really mundane but if you live with cancer, it’s fantastic.

God certainly does some interesting things in life, and when you live with Stage IV esophageal cancer, you have to be ready for anything, for any disruption and at any time! Back into the Cancer World you go, and out you come from it again, someday. It’s cancer – stage IV.

What This Blog is All About

I would like to review what I am trying to accomplish with this blog with all my dear readers.

First, I thought it would be interesting for people to know what it is like to live with Stage IV esophageal cancer – which is one of the worse cancers out there. I try to go beyond the mere physical aspect of cancer; indeed, the physical is the least important aspect of cancer in one way. Cancer comes with a huge toll in many other ways: emotional, mental, psychological, spiritual and otherwise. It completely disrupts ones life. This is what I have labored to chronicle for those who are interested finding out in what it must be like.

Me writing my Blog

 

Second, I use the blog to communicate where I am with my cancer and treatments. There is one of me and hundreds of you, and it’s exhausting to text everyone “how I’m doing.” With this blog, I can let everyone know just by hitting the Publish button once. Also, rumors get started, and it gets back to me that the doctors are considering replacing my brain with that of our Boxer\Labrador dog – crazy things like that float back to me, so this blog helps keep the story straight.

I do not want any sympathy or pity. Back in 2007 when I was first diagnosed, I hated it when anyone would pity me. If you intend on doing that, unfollow me on Facebook and Instagram and never talk to me again. I’ll go for compassion, but let’s not cross the line.

I write from a Christian perspective. I will write from no other perspective. If I wasn’t a Christian, I have no idea where I would be on this journey, but I know it would be no where even close to where I am now mentally. If there is anyone I need to preach to or at, it’s me.

I try to interject humor at times as appropriate, and I hope you get my humor. I’m in trouble if you don’t. My belief is that if you don’t have humor getting through this stuff, you are in big trouble. Losing your sense of humor is a sign that bad things are happening in the inner life.

Finally, I love to write, and I hope you enjoy the blog.

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p.s.  WordPress is a free service, so if you see advertisements, I am not responsible for that.  A few people have said they were questionable in content at times.

When Positive Thinking Isn’t Enough

I’ve thought for years that cancer is about 70 percent mental and 30 percent physical.

There is the cancer diagnosis, and then how we think about the cancer diagnosis. There are the cancer treatments and the treatment’s effects, and how we think about these treatments and their effects. First there is the physical, and then there is the mental.

When you drive around, you see bumper stickers that say, “Cancer sucks.” I don’t happen to believe that, but lets say Cancer is not the first choice for my life, if given the option. Like, on the checklist of what I think I need, “More money” or “More wisdom to raise these teenagers,” or even “More food to feed these teenagers” would be near the top, but not “Cancer.” That wouldn’t be on my list, but it happened to be on God’s list eleven years ago.

But cancer is not easy, even if it doesn’t “suck.” How we react to the cancer is everything, for in this we have the possibly to take a situation that is bad in an Earthly sense and make it worse – much worse. How much worse? I would say seven times worse, but that may not be mathematically correct.

How do we make it worse? Well, we can always throw a pity party and a grand one at that. Then the Earth opens up and down into the depths we go, and it doesn’t take long. We have shot ourselves in the foot, knowingly stepped into a bear trap, stepped out in front of a train. And it does’t end: we become addicted to our funk and usually end up in even greater darkness than we began with.

Another way to do yourself in is to ask the question, “Why me?” Well, see how long it takes to get an answer to that one! Round and round we go, like water swirling down a drain, until we get sucked into the sewer system with no answer, still wondering why all this happened to poor me. Similarly unhealthy thoughts go like this: “God is punishing me.” Resist that. It is not so.

A few weeks ago, in one day I became a semi-invalid and was total care. Nothing prepared me for this, I could not have imagined it, and it was an emotional catastrophe. That was the day I crawled down the hallway to the bathroom and even with this, my mind would not work right and kept careening me into the wall to the right, and I could not stop it.

The only thing that helped me is these verses that kept going through my mind:

Whatsoever is brought upon thee take cheerfully, and be patient when thou art changed to a low estate. For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. Sirach 2: 4-5.

Without those verses, I don’t know where I would have been – perhaps off someplace in the outer constellations of emotional angst, trying to figure life out without ever succeeding in the midst of being a total wreck.

Then there is something called positive thinking. I hate positive thinking. Positive thinking is where you try to convince yourself of something that you don’t really believe anyway. “I can’t walk, I use a urinal and my wife has to dress me but at least I can still blow my nose.” That’s positive thinking. Usually positive thinking ends up in negative thinking, because that you can still blow your nose just isn’t enough to make you really happy.

These cancer lessons, however, carry over to other areas of life, I bet. Things happen in life, but how do I take them? And what does that say about me?