Before we begin our family feast this Thanksgiving, each of us will express gratitude for three things. Oh, dear! What am I going to do? How can I possibly choose only three things?
I’m not joking. My family’s ritual matters to me. Should I put cancer center stage and give thanks for my longest remission? For my longest time out of cancer treatment? For my improved health on immunotherapy?
Or, should I focus on the joys made possible because of surviving serious illness? On the writing, speaking and advocacy projects that have energized me and filled my life with meaning?
Or, should I focus on those times when cancer was nowhere on my mind? On the many relationships and experiences I’ve savored this year?
My gratitude for my health, work, relationships, and joys keeps leading me back to two things, without which none would be possible. First, I’m thankful for the clinicians and researchers whose obvious dedication to patients—and compassionate care of me—facilitated my survival. Second, I’m thankful for the unknowables that played roles in my healing, including how I ended up under the care of those specific clinicians and researchers, and ended up a beneficiary of an experimental drug that worked. In other words, for that which I experience through faith.
For me, Healthy Survivorship balances times of forgetting about my illness to fully enjoy the moment and times of focusing on the fact of my survival so I never take it for granted.
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