(*Michael W. Smith reference intentional)
I’m coming up on the 10 year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis this week. That reality has been present in the back of my mind for months, and I’ve been trying to think of how to honor this anniversary, or as we say in the cancer world, this “cancerversary.”
I’ve also been trying to figure out when to honor that since I got the call on the day before Thanksgiving, but that actual calendar date is the Monday after Thanksgiving this year. Plus, my mom wonders why I would even celebrate the anniversary of the day I got the news since that’s not exactly something worth celebrating. Should I celebrate on February 4th, the day I found out I was in remission? In some ways, that date seems fitting because it’s also World Cancer Day, and yet, I still had 4 more months of treatment, so though remission was an incredible victory, I was still in the trenches and feeling terrible. Should I celebrate May 14th, the day of my last chemo treatment when I knew I would finally start to feel better?
One of the reasons I’ve marked the day before Thanksgiving each year is because it’s such a meaningful time—yes, it was the day my world felt like it came to a halt as I looked “terminal illness” in the face, but it’s also a time to be grateful for all I have and all God has done in my life. In the years since November 2008, Thanksgiving has been that much more poignant for me as a time to celebrate the gift this life truly is. I might have flippantly said that in my previous 21 years—“Oh, life’s a gift!”—but I know that to be true in a profoundly real way now.