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Learning Patience

I prayed for patience and my prayer was answered—in the form of a cancer diagnosis.

Cancer demands patience. More patience than you knew you had, more than you knew you were even capable of.

Every trip to the doctor’s office—and there’s rarely just one practitioner that you see—requires that you wait your turn for an interval ranging from minutes to hours, depending upon how busy the doctor happens to be that day and the level of complication of the case that walks in the door just ahead of you.

Cancer offers you endless tests, each of which has its own incubation period for rendering results. You wait with bated breath for each call, wondering if it will clear you or further seal your fate.

Chemotherapy ties you down in a most literal way, tethering you to an IV as you wait for an excruciatingly slow drip, drip, drip to be done, done, done; counting up or down, depending upon where you are in your quest to complete the magic number of cycles that your oncologist has prescribed to beat back the dragon.

Add to that the time you end up investing in things like radiation, physical therapy, or alternative treatments and it begins to feel like you’ve added a full-time job of sitting idle to your already packed schedule.
           
You learn—early on—that waiting is part of the journey. Of all the things cancer will teach you, perhaps its most important lesson will be to quit running around like a chicken with its head cut off as you race from one thing to another, multi-tasking, always trying to jam more into a twenty-four hour day than is humanly possible. 

Cancer forces you to stop, to take a breath, to prioritize what is really important. Cancer tells you to say no, to respect the limitations it puts on your body. Try to resist and WHAM! You're down for the count with bone-crushing fatigue, gut-wrenching nausea, a prolonged dizzy spell, or any number of other worrisome symptoms designed to put you on pause.
           
And somewhere, in the middle of all of this waiting, you discover that you really don't mind it so much. In fact, you rather enjoy those found moments when you can be alone with your thoughts, catch up on your reading, or simply immerse yourself in noticing the way the sun is shining through the window in dappled patches of warmth.

You find yourself less inclined to tap your foot as you stand in line at the grocery store, less likely to snap at the child who still hasn't put on his shoes despite numerous reminders to do so. The tick-tock of minutes slipping away has been muted to the point that you no longer even notice it.

You recognize that every passing minute is another that you've been granted, and that miracle brings you to a whole new level of joy. 

Incompatible with Life: A story of hope
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