It's a beautiful rainy Monday here. I love Monday. It's my favorite day of the week. It's like a new week full of possibilities. I love rainy Mondays best. It's as if the world slows down just a little bit before rushing into the week...a nice slow rainy Monday :)
I've been thinking a lot lately about all of the everyday miracles in my life since this cancer journey has begun. I think sometimes we think of miracles as only the big thing, the unbelievable thing, the impossible thing. When really, there are so many little miraculous things in our life every day.
We've all heard of blessings in disguise...I think sometimes our miracles are hidden as well. Sometimes they may look like adversity, when really they're blessings all along.
Here's my list:
1) I had to have reconstructive surgery as a child. Had I not had that surgery it is highly likely we wouldn't have found my cancer until it was too late. Even if the reconstruction had been mere centimeters off, we couldn't have found it. Miracle #1.
2) My urologist just "happened" to run into my oncologist at the grocery store the night he found my cancer. Happenstance? I don't think so. Miracle #2.
3) Having such good response from the chemo - so that my cancer shrunk from 30% of my bladder down to less than 5%, and whatever was causing the lymph node to show up on PET scan to disappear completely. Not everyone has this kind of response. Miracle #3
4) Having a secondary surgeon who is willing to help with my procedure - so much that he will get jurisdiction to perform surgery at a hospital outside his own. Everyday practice? Not usually. Miracle #4.
What's my point in all of this? I'm not trying to belittle the actual occurrences of miracles, I'm only trying to say that in some ways all of these things are tiny miracles - at least they are to me.
From the beginning I've been praying that God would just heal me from all of this...I was expecting a miracle. But the thought occurred to me sometime last night that through this surgery I am receiving my miracle. Twenty, thirty, forty years ago bladder cancer, if they could have even diagnosed it, would have been a death sentence. Twenty years ago chemotherapy would have been harsh enough to have taken me out all on its own. Twenty years ago I would have never received a prognosis of 95-98% survival rate when talking about bladder cancer.
Although my surgery will be radical, and my physical body forever altered, this is a life-saving procedure for me. In so many ways, this surgery is my miracle. I don't want to miss that because I've been waiting for something else. I don't want to miss the rainbow because I'm mourning over the rain.
Right now it's cold, rainy and windy on this Monday morning. And yet outside my window is a bird, sitting on a tree branch, no shelter from the weather, but she sits there chirping nonetheless.
I will not mourn the loss of my bladder, or any other organ my doctors choose to take. What I will focus on is the good this surgery will do. Yes, there will be scars, big ones, scars that will never go away. But I will wear them proudly because I know that because of these scars my life was spared. I will not despise them for altering my physical form. I will look at them fondly and with great appreciate because I know that in their own way, they too, are part of my miracle!
Only By His Grace,
Billie
No comments:
Post a Comment