By now you already know. The posters on the wall stressing positivity and perseverance. The cute little girl with a fuzzy, bald head playing across from you in the waiting room. The private conversation between your parents and the doctor that has been going on for what seems like hours. So, try to keep your emotions in check, to suppress the looming negative thoughts, to be strong for Mom and Dad. This will be harder on them than it will be on you. Believe it or not, you will look back on this day as a divine intervention. You will come to realize that this moment was the beginning of a life-changing experience, one that you will come to be thankful for.

        You are about to be told to put your life on hold for three and a half years. Immediately, you’ll start to do the math and figure out what three and a half years of treatment means, what you will miss out on as a result. You’ll reason that you will be 21 when you get your normal life back. The enormity of that time will be unsettling.

        Your immediate plans will be very different than they were just a few short hours ago. Football practice and a party later tonight will be replaced with a room in the intensive care unit and an operation tomorrow morning. You will soon find out you have already attended your last day of high school.

         Your future will seem bleak. You will not be leaving for college in two months like you had intended. Like you have worked so hard for. However, your friends will all still go away to school and you will hear about their exciting new experiences; dorms, football games, parties. They’ll experience everything you wanted for yourself. And thanks to social media, you’ll be able to experience it all in real-time from your bed. Being happy for them will be difficult. When they complain about their roommates and dining hall food, you’ll want to get angry. You will want to tell them they have nothing to complain about in comparison.

          However, you will never be more grateful for your friends than during this trying time. They will normalize your life when nothing about your life seems normal. They’ll make you laugh when it seems you have nothing to laugh about. These are the friends you’ll grow old with. They will think that you all got closer because of what has happened to you and that may be partly true, but your situation hasn’t caused this connection; it has just caused you to realize it.

          Soon enough, the physical improvements you have noticed in yourself resulting from your hard-work will begin to disappear. The curly hair that you have worn the same since fourth grade will begin to fall out in clumps. You will no longer recognize the body you have worked so hard to build up over the last few months. You will think the weight-lifting you have been doing before school and the wind sprints after school were all for nothing now that your college football dreams have been dashed.

          Eventually, you’ll realize your hard work has equipped you with intangible qualities far more valuable than any physical skills. You’ll come to understand that while you were strengthening your body physically, you were also building a mental fortitude that will prepare you for a much more difficult obstacle. Every “life lesson” that has been imparted on you, that you figured would not come into play until much later in life will become immediately relevant.

          Mental toughness will be an asset time and again. When you’re about to collapse during the final minute of your eighth, hour-long session of total body radiation in four days and you think you can’t stand up straight for another second. When mom searches high and low to find any kind of lotion that will subdue the feeling that you are burning alive from the radiation burns scorching your skin. When your head feels like it’s going to explode from the spinal fluid leaked to your brain following a dosage of chemotherapy through the spine. In these moments, you will rely on this mental toughness and push past the limits of your own expectations.

          Inevitably, you will get frustrated. The question, “Why Me” will creep into your head, and you will feel sorry for yourself. While it is perfectly healthy to be upset over your circumstances, let these moments be brief. The task you have been faced with is not impossible; far from it. A metaphor family members will use to describe your predicament is a train stalled on the side of the tracks, waiting to eventually resume its current journey. However, three years after the fact, I can tell you this metaphor is inaccurate. By prioritizing positivity and not letting your circumstances affect your optimism, you will find that the train has not stalled at all. Instead, it is simply taking a detour. A detour that will include more laughter and memories than you can possibly imagine where you sit right now. As time goes on, you will find this detour led you to a new journey entirely, with a completely different destination.

          When things finally settle down you will read stories about people in the same situation as you who talk about discovering an advanced appreciation for life. Eventually, you will attempt to discover a similar appreciation. You will search for the meaning behind everything that has transpired in your life over the last few months. You will try to force this understanding.

          These attempts will be unsuccessful. Rather, this appreciation will overcome you in brief, fleeting, unexpected moments. It will come at 1:30 in the morning when you are falling asleep playing Xbox with Mike. You will be exhausted but you will beg him to play one more game because you will remember a time when there was a chance there might not be another game. You’ll realize how lucky you are, and laugh with him a little bit harder than you usually do when he inevitably recounts a story from his day. Just for a second you’ll be so damn happy and experience a level of elation you never otherwise could have. He will laugh a little harder too, but not for the same reason you are. He will never be able to understand how much he truly means to you.

            While a complete understanding will take long to develop, you will immediately recognize how fortunate you are to live in such a supportive community. It is rare that one gets to see the full range of people that care about them, and you are lucky enough to experience this all at once. Family, friends, teachers, coaches, and everyone in between will have a positive impact on your life. Whether it be a text, phone call, visit or home-cooked meal (You will never eat better in your life than you will in the next eight months), each will be special and you will never forget it.

            You’re about to be called in. For better or worse, this day and this moment will always be a part of you. However, it need not define you. So, don’t write off the next few years of your life just yet, you may be surprised how they turn out.

                                                               

 

                                   Best,

                                   Steve