What does cancer look like? What does it smell like, or taste like or feel like? To me, it feels like melting and it smells like the inside of an N95 mask during a four hour chemotherapy session. Even after I’m home and the mask is off, it’s the metallic taste that coats my tongue; the one no amount of brushing can touch. I taste it again today, and it’s been more than twelve hours since I removed my mask and returned home from my one year colonoscopy.
Every three months, I return to the cancer center for blood work and an oncology visit. Having been diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer in the fall of 2020, masks have been mandatory throughout my entire treatment period and beyond. I was fortunate enough to have access to enough N95 masks to cycle through six months of radiation and chemo. The welcome attendants always insisted that I wear the regular mask so I just slipped it on top of the N95.
Breathing your own air again and again just feels wrong. It’s like breathing into your hands when it’s cold outside and you’ve forgotten your gloves, only you keep doing it long after you’ve come inside. It’s testing your breath for freshness on the way into the dentist and being glad you brushed just before you walked out the door, only you didn’t.
Cancer looks like twenty-three extra pounds on me one year later but the exact opposite for someone else. It’s being winded far too soon when I take a walk outside and getting a quarter mile away and struggling to make it back to the bathroom. This is my new normal but I am one year cancer free and counting. Every day is a new day to trust God as my Healer and Provider. Every day is an opportunity to learn more about myself and to recognize something new for which to be thankful.
Today I am thankful for a good report that shows my surgical site has healed beautifully and I have absolutely no polyps! I’m thankful I will not have to repeat this test with its vile prep for another year. I praised God for this very thing each day before my test because I know He is able, but I follow each praise with a disclaimer. “Not what I want, Lord. Your will be done.” (Luke 22:42) This is not because I need to give God an out. It’s because I recognize that His thoughts and His ways are higher than mine. (Isaiah 55:8-9) It’s because He knows what I cannot possibly know about every nanosecond of my life from now to eternity as He knew me before I was conceived and even before Christ died for me. (Psalm 139:13-16, Romans 5:8, Revelation 13:8) So today I say, “Thank You, God. You are worthy of praise now and forevermore.” (Revelation 5:12)
“Always be joyful.
Give thanks no matter what happens.
God wants you to thank him because you believe in Christ Jesus.
Don’t try to stop what the Holy Spirit is doing.”
1 Thessalonians 5:16, 18-19 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/1th.5.16-19.NIRV
“Brothers and sisters, here is what I want you to know.
What has happened to me has actually helped to spread the good news.”
Philippians 1:12 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/php.1.12.NIRV
*Song with this title released in 2000 by Chris Rice
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