Even with cancer, everything is relative

While I've been doing my best to stay focused on my fight and positive about a successful outcome, there are days when I just want to feel sorry for myself that I have to deal with any of this cancer treatment stuff. Then I hear about someone else who has/had it worse than me, and I feel guilty for complaining... Of course, I know I need not feel guilty since it's awful that I or anyone else has to go through fighting cancer. I should be entitled to a little self pity. However, these stories do lend perspective and remind me that, if someone else (with even more difficult odds than mine) can keep fighting, so can I.

My friend's dad is battling stage 4 liver cancer. It's now too late for chemotherapy, radiation or pharmaceutical treatments. So I'm trying to feel "lucky" (as lucky as one can be with cancer) that my surgical outcome was good and that I'm going through the hell of chemotherapy mainly as insurance against recurrence.

I also received an article about a producer on NPR's show "Car Talk" whose son was BORN with cancer:

Henry was diagnosed with cancer the day before he was born. For any of you out there who have dealt with cancer I don't need to tell you that cancer sucks. Big time. The doctors told us that the tumor in Henry's spine was growing so rapidly that he had to begin chemotherapy immediately. That meant delivering him early, a month before his due date.

Henry began chemo when he was just one day old.

We were incredibly fortunate to live near one of the best childhood cancer centers in the country, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston. Henry had an amazing team of doctors and nurses who guided us through the months of chemotherapy, the hospital stays, the infections and blood transfusions, and all the scary stuff that goes along with cancer.

See what I mean? Can you even imagine? As if it's not traumatic enough to be born a month premature, he had to start his tiny life with chemotherapy. Henry apparently just turned 6 and is a happy, healthy, normal boy. Surely, if Henry can get through it, I can, too. So the fight goes on...