I’m not sure why I’m thinking about this today in particular but I am.

Today I’m thinking about the strength it must take to continue when the nightmare that is breast cancer never ends. When the treatments are what you do to stay alive. How that journey is so different then the one that I am on.

I struggle a bit with a multitude of health issues that means I spend way too much time in doctors offices or shuffling between different doctors appointments. And yet I’m on the path to recovery. I’m moving forward. I’m getting stronger. I’m re-engaging with contract work, teaching, and my PhD studies. I’m planning a ski vacation, and an Epic Experience.

Perhaps it is yet another death within the breast cancer blogging community that has me rattled. Or a friend that regularly subjects herself to chemotherapy that makes her horribly sick for days, but this nightmare treatment seems to be keeping her cancer in check – at least for now.

Perhaps it is reading an article that crossed my twitter stream about what it means to take all measures at ending life. At what point do we stop the fighting and decide to let the nightmare end? I think about how it would be a luxury to be 89 years old.

It is not that I think life is a nightmare, it is that I think cancer treatment is. It prolongs your life, but also it can take your life away. I think about what I might do if the nightmare were to never end for me? And then I remind myself that this path of thinking is unproductive. I am allowed to have a brief sadness, but I cannot dwell on it. I remind myself that I do not know how I would approach the never ending nightmare, and that I hope I never need to learn how I will deal with it. For now, I shall pick up the pieces of me and move on. Take a deep breath and approach the day a new.