A few thoughts and simple methods for finding a way to get back to the center of a life that includes all the emotions
PUBLISHED September 10, 2018
Martha lives in Illinois and was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in January 2015. She has a husband and three children, ranging in age from 12 to 18, a dog and a lizard.
When I was growing up, my mom forbade skateboards, but she did allow unrestricted use of the balance board that sat at the edge of our garage. A balance board, if you don't know, can look like a skateboard without wheels that is balanced – by the user – on a can-shaped roller. It is difficult to stay steady in the center for any length of time.
While I've compared living with cancer to a high-stakes walk on a balance beam, where difficulties lay in wait along either side, at almost four years into a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis, I'd say it's more accurately a life lived on a balance board. Staying centered most of the time is hard work when there's a life to live that's interrupted by the steady, relentless and difficult parade of appointments, scans, treatments and deaths (113 a day in the US alone).
Like stepping onto a rolling, unsteady piece of plywood, life with cancer is often uncontrollable swinging between opposite extremes, even as you use all your available strength to find the center.
While I've compared living with cancer to a high-stakes walk on a balance beam, where difficulties lay in wait along either side, at almost four years into a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis, I'd say it's more accurately a life lived on a balance board. Staying centered most of the time is hard work when there's a life to live that's interrupted by the steady, relentless and difficult parade of appointments, scans, treatments and deaths (113 a day in the US alone).
Like stepping onto a rolling, unsteady piece of plywood, life with cancer is often uncontrollable swinging between opposite extremes, even as you use all your available strength to find the center.
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