Moments of Self Pity...and then back on solid ground

I have been building up to a bit of a meltdown recently. You can read too much about cancer and about people who have cancer and it can get to you. The sad stories of people who die within a few years of diagnosis after a long, protracted struggle and who leave mourning loved ones behind can really bring you down. I've found that I try to create my own sort of statistics by reading stories, finding out how long each person in each story with my type of cancer lasted, what they had to suffer through in order to paint an approximate picture of my own future.

Ghastly thing to do to yourself.

My sister is the most helpful person to me through all this without even knowing it. She sent me the super-smoothie recipe (earlier post) which I attribute to my relative health and well-being and she sent me this blog (click HERE) about a man, now 68 years old, who was diagnosed first with stage 4 lung cancer, then 3 1/2 years later, prostate and throat cancer all of which he has beaten. To celebrate, he is walking the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Mexico. It's an amazing story and what they seem to attribute his survival to is his exercise. I've been reading a lot of about this...that regardless of age, gender, race, etc., the main components of those who survive long-term (I guess that means over five years) is a quality of life that includes fairly vigorous or at least regular physical and mental activity. This is my life. I'm very active, some would say 'outdoorsy' or 'sporty', and I'm a grad student - lots of mental activity.

I can do this. Or at the very least, I can give it my best shot.