Category:
Health/Wellness
When faced with life-changing decisions, how would you handle them? Would you depend on the advice of others? Go with your gut feeling or pray to a higher being?
Introduction
"When it looked like the sun wasn't going to shine anymore, there's a rainbow in the clouds." -Dr. Maya Angelou
I received a phone call that changed my life and attitude. I will never forget the day or the hour, October 31, 2013. I lay in bed, not asleep, contemplating whether my feet should touch the floor. After that call, I remained in bed, digesting the devastating news. Everything was in slow motion as if time stood still. "You have cancer of the uterus, stage one." I never asked, "Why me, Father?" This news was personal. It challenged me spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally. There was no bright sun that day. I relied on my faith and prayed the Creator would give me the strength to fight cancer.
I was no stranger to cancer. Four family members, whom I loved, succumbed to the disease. My cousin Sonya (bone cancer), my brother Clarence (lung cancer), his wife Joeann (ovarian cancer), and my uncle Sonny (prostate cancer). Now, I find myself in the same predicament, and here's my story. I understand why Sonya was too weak to shadow dance as I had requested before she went into hospice, and why my uncle Sonny, an R&B singer from the 1950s, when invited to perform in England, was too weak to fly or perform.
There were times with this disease I was too weak to stand. I get it; when I took my brother home from his radiation treatment, he looked at me and my son. He said, "I'm less than a man with this cancer." I understand this disease is degrading. It robbed me of my self-worth. I saw the coroner put my brother in a black body bag. The image stayed with me for a long time. I eulogized my brother Clarence.
Here I'm, wondering, will my children see a coroner put me in a black body bag? Who would eulogize me? Will I have to write my obituary?
The five-year journey was like a stormy boat ride from one year to the next, not knowing what to expect. Is cancer still there? Is it in remission? I had to ride out the storm when the pain became severe, and sleep was the only form of relief. Rode it when it shook my faith. Not only facing the fear of the disease but the treatments and how that would affect my underlying condition. Rode it when I was too weak to stand or show my baldness. I couldn't remain in this storm. Not alone. This was where my faith in the Creator and reading scriptures gave me the strength I needed.
I got through it with prayers and a positive attitude. The Creator brought me through other trials in my life, such as an attack in junior high school for defending His honor. In my late teenage years, saving me from an attempted rape, and later in life from an attempted robbery at gunpoint. Let alone the time in 1985 when I had a Murphy's Law Day. If the Creator could do all that, I knew He could get me through this battle with cancer.
I couldn't look at this like going through it in a vacuum. It wasn't just happening to me. It happened to my loved ones and will happen to other people's loved ones. I viewed cancer as my personal war. I must win the battle at all costs. I couldn't give in to it ravaging my body with daily pain. My experience with the disease didn't result in my death. But it was unnerving.
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