1. I have learned to be alone and to appreciate the company - to know who I am to love me with all of my faults and to realize that the only opinion that matters is mine because each day I get up I have to look mysefl in the face and know that the choices I have made are mine - not influenced by emotional blackmail or medical manipulation.
2. What you put in your mouth is the most important and profound choice you can make each and every day, that these choices you make today will have repercussions in the future.
3. Your circle of friends and family in your life will change - there is this ideology out there that speaking about the disease can lead to you getting it and people can be downright nasty to avoid the conversation. At some point after relegating yourself to a quiet hidden life because your hair loss and dark circles are too uncomfortable for them to handle - you realize that these people and their actions are toxic to your recovery and you walk away.
4. You will begin to realize the beauty around you - recently I traveled to California to escape and recenter, I opted to stay in Long Beach which is one of the most active and largest ports in this country. What struck me about this stay was the amazing container ships that flow into this country, loaded with thousands of containers - stacked 10 high and 30 across these quiet giants of industry were amazingly beautiful to watch as they danced in and out of port - carrying goods that define our lives. My favorites are sunrise and sunset - it amazing to watch God's handy work as he painted the sky with amazing colors.
5. My uncle used to tell me that a doctors profession is a practice and they are practicing on you - it is ironic something that I was told as a child that had prophetic irony for me in the past year. I am rounding out the year with my 3rd doctor after the Top Oncologist I hired sold me out for his BMW payment by selling me a prolific poison that devastated my system for 8 months. I won't know if the 16 days that I took Interferon at the cost of $2300 will have any significant impact on my life expectancy but I can tell you that it cost me 10 months of my life as I dealt with the impact - 6 nodules on my thyroid, enlarged uterus, swollen lymph nodes that made it painful to move my head, hair loss - twice, weight gain and depression. I became his guinea pig as he ignored my request that no addictive drugs be used in my treatment were ignored and when I presented with symptoms of addiction his response was to double the dose of this drug. I learned that I can't trust anyone but myself to treat this disease and that if it does not feel right it isn't right.
6. Exercise is paramount to your recovery - whether it is yoga practiced long and slow to a walk around the lake to a bike ride in the country - put on your UPF 100 hat and your 70 SPF sunscreen and get outside move and enjoy life.
7. Explore alternate therapies - read - learn and try new things to see how your body reacts - do what feels good to you and know that this will take time. I started getting massages every 2 weeks - my favorite is the Lomi Lomi the draw back is that the next day I feel like I have been hit by a dump truck but this is actually beneficial in shaking loose the residual interferon and the aftereffect is from my body reprocessing this chemical.
8. No one can tell you why you got this disease - there are the risk factors that they say defines who gets skin cancer the funny thing is that melanoma is a cancer that manifests predominately on the skin but that there are many who feel that labeling melanoma as skin cancer is incorrect. This is cancer, it arrives without invitation and entangles every fiber of your life - understanding what you did that allowed this parasite into your life is complex and confusing path. Above all know that the world we live in today has a better understanding of toxins and their impact - so all you can do is choose better today.
As this year comes to a close and I move on with living - these are the things that melanoma has taught me, what melanoma has revealed to me and how no matter how resist it - how melanoma has redefined me.
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