snow falling on lung cancer

I awoke to snow falling outside the window. It was Tuesday, February 7^th, the Super Bowl had just been played two days earlier and Valentine’s Day was looming.

For the first time in my life I had spent the night in a hospital because of a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) following my CT guided needle biopsy

Staring out the window believing I was watching my last snow fall - memories of my life swirled in a snow globe.

I’m an old dude, I never knew anyone who ever survived lung cancer. I was tired of 7 weeks of tests and kids in medical coats. To quote another old dude, “You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing”.

My melodramatic melancholy was shattered by my adult daughter arriving with chocolate milk. (To truly know me is to know that chocolate milk is my elixir.)

Tuesday morning, Nov 27^th I awoke to snow falling again, 9 months and three weeks later. Five mornings after Thanksgiving, and 25 days until the 1 year cancerversary of the chest x-ray that caught the 9 mm vague nodular density in my left upper lobe.

That tumor is gone and I’m here. If I can measure my life living with a lung cancer diagnosis by smiling at the changing seasons and standing in falling snow, I am a man blessed. 

Patrick Leer

BLOGS:

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

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