Secrets from the alternate universe

Lauren Terrazzano | Life, With Cancer

December 5, 2006

I've never understood the people who insist that getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them. I could have done without this so-called epiphany in my life. My family and friends could have as well.

Still, the one enlightening thing about it - and this is a stretch - is that getting such a disease offers a certain perspective that often eludes the rest of the world.

We travelers on this road have learned a secret: the value of time. Down to the day. The minute. The second.

We are forced to confront our own mortality every day. We see the bus coming straight at us, while other people never knew what hit them. So we cram as much life as we can into whatever time there is left, because each doctor's appointment or scan is a dress rehearsal for the bad news we know could ultimately come, as one reader wrote to me recently.

Lauren Terrazzano Bio | Recent columns

Still, many who have never had a life-threatening experience tend to plod along toward infinity with what I call luxury problems: Worrying about the thread count on their expensive sheets, why they didn't get that raise, or how to get their kid into the right school.

How I long for the days of such worries. How I long to go back to the time when my biggest concern was where my story played in the newspaper, not whether a suspicious dark spot would show up on my CT scan.

This is not to diminish other people's dramas. If you want to exist among the living, you have to acknowledge the rest of the world doesn't know what it's like to wait for the results of a biopsy or to undergo chemotherapy.

Unfortunately, many of us do. And while there are days I want to hide under my down comforter, I offer the following advice to the masses, not just those living in the parallel universe that is cancer.

Live.

Here are some suggestions.

1. Get married. What are you waiting for?

2. Get a divorce. Why be with someone who doesn't make you happy?

3. Remember that everybody's family is a bit crazy, especially during the holidays. There is no true-life Brady Bunch.

4. Have a baby. Or adopt one. Or choose neither option and be happy with your decision to have a child-free life. You're not getting any younger.

5. Order dessert as your first course and your last course in a fancy restaurant.

6. Go to Iceland to soak in thermal mineral baths.

7. Go to Cuba to see one of the last bastions of Communism before Castro's reign ends. Or go to Coney Island and ride the Cyclone, if that makes you happy.

8. Get the tattoo or nose ring you've wanted since college. Your mother will get over it.

9. Lose your fear of flying. Really. It's limiting your view of the world.

10. Advise that chronic complainer with the "woe is me" complex that he or she could benefit from a good anti-depressant. Realize you are that person sometimes.

11. Tell your family and friends you love them.

12. Don't give power to those who have shown a pattern of hurting you.

13. Take down the license plate number of the jerk on the highway driving crazily and call the police.

14. Seek subtle revenge on those who create the petty annoyances in life. Phone a telemarketer back on the number on your caller ID and proceed to chat about your latest root canal.

15. Float in crystal-clear water somewhere where you can see your toes on the bottom. Rinse. And repeat.

You get the idea.