Many people don’t like the phrase “(So-and-so) lost
their fight with cancer”. They want to say cancer never wins. Sometimes it
doesn’t. If you’re lucky enough to catch it early, and get good medical
treatment you can beat it. For those of us who aren’t lucky like that, cancer
will win. It’s just that simple. What bothers me is the idea that if you lose the
fight you’re a loser and a failure. That’s just not true- just ask the Spartans
about Thermopylae. Losing isn’t always failure. If a baseball player “fails” to
get a hit 7 out of 10 times, he’ll end up in the Hall of Fame. I believe that even
if you know you’re going to lose a fight, that doesn’t mean the fight isn’t
worth fighting. Sometimes knowing you’re going to lose, the fight becomes more
important, and the reasons to fight become clearer. I have stage IV colon
cancer and I fight every day.
I
fight because I want to live.
I
fight for my wife.
I
fight for my family.
I
fight because I want to see Paris again.
I
fight because it’s a fight worth fighting.
I fight because I want to live.
There will come a time when my
fight will be over; when I will lose the fight. For me, that’s inevitable. I’m
okay with that- or as okay as I can be. Don’t get me wrong I’m not happy about
it. I’m sad and mad about it on a daily basis. I look at it like Rocky Balboa
did in the original Rocky. Near the
end of the movie, the night before the big fight between Rocky and Apollo,
Rocky and Adrian are in bed, and Rocky tells Adrian that he knows he can’t beat
Apollo. She tells him that he “worked so hard”, and he tells her that it
doesn’t matter. Then he says:
…'Cause I was thinkin', it really don't
matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head,
either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the
distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell
rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life,
see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood.
That’s what I plan to do with
cancer- go the distance. The difference between Rocky’s fight against Apollo
and my fight against cancer is that people fight cancer every day. I just want
to add my name to the (unfortunately) ever-growing list. While I won’t be
physically standing at the end of the fight,
I’ll know I’ll have given it everything I’ve got.
I’ll
know.
My wife will know.
My family will know.
The cancer will know.
Stuart Scott, the ESPN anchor who died of
cancer of the appendix said, “You beat cancer by how you live, why you live,
and the manner in which you live.” Just because I’m going to lose my fight
against cancer, that doesn’t mean I failed or a loser, and it doesn’t mean that
it’s not a fight worth fighting.
