Some days are better than other days. For example, today is my sixtieth birthday and I got to take my granddaughter to preschool. She calls me Grumpy. Today is a work-from-home day in Durham, as it is almost every day, with an amazing team spread out, as they are, from Denmark to California. Work still provides great satisfaction so I allow it to occupy a significant chunk of my time and attention; my headspace. Just yesterday I told Julie that I had been having “flow time” at work recently. Hours that slip by without notice. Time when I am heads down in a project at 10AM, then, looking up, realizing that it is 2PM. Work is engaging because we are making a difference in the lives of people. That’s what I want to spend my dwindling days doing.
Fourteen years ago I gained a new perspectives on Birthdays. The lesson came from a nervous genetic counselor, a pleasant 40-something year old brunette lady, in a small exam room in Philadelphia. She had a flip chart and an earnest, serious countenance. She was nervous because she had not done this many times and the patient, me, was going to get bad news from her because the bad news came from my genetic results. It was her job to explain it to me. The doctor warned me it was coming but had not spelled it out or gone over the data with us. One of the charts was a scatter plot diagram of known patients with genetic results like mine. The swarm of little dots each represented a death date. So, at a glance, it was possible to easily see how long people had lived after being diagnosed with my type of cancer.
In a moment, in that glance, it was clear that very few birthdays remained. To say the least, it was too much for anyone to take in. We listened. Took her pamphlets. Thanked the lady, and left still in shock. Surgery had been three months before, chemo shots to the eye had started, and we were back in Philadelphia to receive the genetic results. The range of possibilities were not really clear to us that morning. We knew it was cancer, and that it could be serious, but we did not have much clarity. That changed with that one chart. There were people still alive 30 months after diagnosis, a few. Still fewer after 40 months and very very few after that. The known cohort showed 70% mortality after 40 months.
But that was 14 years ago this February. The best news is that my cancer did not metastasize to the liver as predicted. Not that it won’t, that still happens believe it or not, even after all this time. I still get liver scans once a year which always cause the “high scanxiety” to all flood back until the results come back. No Evidence of Disease or “NED” are the kindest, friendliest words in the arcane language of medicine. If I had a son I’d name him Ned. So I did not get metz, I deeply internalized the message enhernet in that chart and changed things in my life. I sold things, simplified, dropped stressful ways and tried to focus on living life, and here’s the important part, living life for the ones around me.
The blessings I count on my birthday begin with the simple fact that I get to have one. So my friends did not get to have one this year. Kelly, Ben, Kristin, more. Dreading birthdays is the very height of youth and immaturity and not thought through. What? You don’t want another one? Getting older is a win. This year I got to celebrate another anniversary with my high school sweetheart and wife of 37 years. I got to see my granddaughter’s first words and steps and hugs and, and, and. I got to celebrate another clear scan. I got to go to five new countries. I won the top award in my field. I got to see my daughters grow together even more closely after one moved to be near the family. Then I got to see a niece do the same thing and move her family of four from Boston to Cary, to be near family. I got to break my personal best reading record of 40+ books and counting this year. I got to travel 44,770 miles on 17 trips visiting 32 cities across 71 total days on the road.
Thank you everyone who wished me HPD today. Please know I cherish being 60 and plan to have a full and probably exhausting day that will hopefully include picking this one up from Daycare.
