Defining Success

When I tell people that "I whooped that tumor's ass!".... somehow it isn't enough. They want to label my success. They want to define the victory with medical terminology. Typical words that folks want to hear are cure.... or in remission.... or cancer-free. They don't want my whoop-ass phraseology, they want something more clinical. It isn't enough that the tumor is no longer a lump, but a hard mass of scar tissue, it isn't enough that the CEA blood markers have been in the normal range for months, it isn't enough that the latest MRI showed that the lymph nodes are clear, or that I feel great and look great. They want WORDS, a medical mandate of some kind.

So at my last oncology visit (July), I searched for that defining word. I asked the doc: "ok, so ..... how would you categorize where I am in all of this? I know you probably cannot say I am cured or cancer-free. But what WOULD you say? What is my status?"

Her response was: "I would say you are a survivor."

Survivor. Yes, now that I think of it, that's the typical jargon used. When people don their pink t-shirts and go on those breast cancer walks, that's what they call women who have beat the damn thing.

Survivors.

But being a survivor, in my mind, puts me into a passive state. One survives a tornado, or a flood, or any other natural disaster over which one has no control. Calling myself a survivor somehow makes it sound as if I was "under assault" by the cancer, or more realistically, perhaps, by the standard cure: the assault of chemo, radiation, surgery. I never subjected my body to these inhumane and toxic therapies. I took control of the situation. I changed the domain (my body) in which the cancer was doing its damage. And it worked.

I would not call myself a survivor. I would call myself a VICTOR. I did the work -- I found the right therapies for me and I applied them. I could not have done it without the help of my mistletoe doctor. I also could not have done it without all of the books and articles and resources out there that guided me through the alternative field of cancer therapies and gave me hope that I was on the right track.

I still say that I simply whooped that tumor's ass. I am the VICTOR.

My next visit with my oncologist is on September 11 (yes, really!), 2014.
Believe it or not, September 11, 2013 was the day that I received my cancer diagnosis.
What a year it has been!

Thanks to all who have supported me and prayed for my recovery.