Don't Just "Be Alive" -- Live.

This past week I went through my normal round of tests that are required every three months: blood work, 24-hour urine work-up, and a bone marrow biopsy.  The latter is by far the most annoying, as no matter how many times you have had one done, you still do not get used to the little 'tap tap tap' you feel as they are trying to make it through the surface of your hip bone into the marrow.

All of this is investigation, in my case, is to scrutinize the body for the abundance of and/or imbalances in an immune system signaling agent.  If they were to find such an imbalance in the lab workups, it would indicate the presence of plasma cells in my bone marrow -- a particular type of which is cancerous.  The bone marrow biopsy is a secondary test to "look for" these plasma cells.  When I was originally diagnosed in 2009, they found that 30% of my bone marrow had already been invaded by "bad" plasma cells.

This time, they did not find any imbalance.  I am still in remission.

The nurses at the Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) unit rejoiced with me.  Some patients do not make it.  Some patients live, but their lives never resume to anything close to what they were experiencing before.  Some people decide not only to stay alive, but to LIVE.  Their lives may be different, but they will indeed go on living, not just being alive.

Some people are so enamored with the idea of "being alive".  I FEEL ALIVE is the hallmark yell of my generation.  I want more.  As Thoreau said, "… and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived.”  For most, being alive is easy.  For cancer patients and survivors, being alive in and of itself may be difficult.  For all of us … the goal should be to move beyond being alive to living.