Don't pay attention to the expiration date...

It's January 2, 2020 and I wonder what sorts of adventures lay ahead of me. When I turned 50 a couple years ago, I recalled something Bette Midler had once said in an interview when asked about her life after the age of 50. She said (and I'm probably paraphrasing here), "I know I probably have more years behind me than I do ahead of me." That quote stuck with me and I've adopted it. And it's okay. It's really okay.

As I look back on the fifth anniversary of my Multiple Myeloma diagnosis (which came sometime around December 9, 2014), I think of how far I've come. While I don't dwell on the bad things that happened (falling out of remission from my stem cell transplant, the repair of my right arm, or falling out of remission again and needing to start a new regimen of medications), or worry about the things that await me, I still remember Dr. K saying the life expectancy after diagnosis for someone with Multiple Myeloma was generally ten years.

That, of course, freaked out my husband and sent family members into a panic. I wasn't as bothered by that number because it's a general statistic that is thrown out there because people tend to be concerned with time. I also believed that I would be attentive to my disease and do what I needed to do to make sure that didn't apply to me. And at this point in time, I still don't believe it has much to do with me.  

Since I was a child, I'd railed against convention and approached every "you won't" and "you can't" as a dare. My response was always an "oh, yeah? I'll show you!" Oftentimes, people would shake their heads in reaction to my action and, truth be told, some of it was cringe-inducing, but people learnt quickly that I would do things just to prove them wrong. This of course, was if it was something that was within my control. Sometimes not.

While the mutation of cancer cells isn't something I can directly control, there are a number of parts that I can control and I'm doing my best to do that. I've got this. There are no solutions to the disease as a whole, but science and medicine are working on those things. In the meantime, I report what needs to be reported and listen to what my body is telling me.

I can't offer any advice to you other than to not accept defeat as an option, to remain stubborn and to make every day a good day. If you hadn't done this before your diagnosis, you should probably start. No one knows how much time they have. Am I right?