It’s my birthday today! I’m 62. Just look at the awesome Dino-age volcano cake the Official Sweetie made!
There was a while where birthdays didn’t mean so much. Another day older and closer to death, as the kids say. A wise friend of mine refuted that idea a long time ago; he reframed the idea not as getting closer to death, but to chalking up another day of life.
I appreciated that outlook, and I mostly lived it, but having incurable (but under control) cancer makes me appreciate each day, each week (as Official Sweetie and I reload my meds) and especially each year as gifts to be celebrated.
I am here. The barbarians are far from the gates right now, but they are out in the woods somewhere. My outcome from the cancer therapy puts me way out on the good end of things. I’m busting the curve. Just yesterday I saw that my PSA remains undetectable. One of my doctors said he hadn’t seen numbers like mine before, when the cancer was in the bones.
Birthdays mean a little more now. The medications I take guarantee that life will never be what it was before. But this morning I said “Elevator Ocelot Rutabaga” and welcomed another muddled year.
Thank you all who have wished me well. I hope the new muddled year brings you happiness. Your support, from near and far, means the world to me.
