"You Have Cancer"

         These are the scariest words that you may ever hear.  I mean how are you supposed to react? All I could do was cry.  I cried for like forty minutes non-stop. But then I came to the realization that crying is not going to get rid of it. It was time to develop a game plan. My game plan was to fight this head on. I was taught by my older brother that pain is just weakness leaving your body. He first told me that when I was fourteen. We were running and I had gotten a cramp. He wouldn't let me stop. From that day on I used that thought process with everything that confronted me. Cancer was no different.
          I would have to deal with the pain of chemo in order to beat the cancer. Granted my decision to do it through IVs, rather then having a port put in, was probably the dumbest thing I could have done, but I did truly learn how strong my chemo regime was. One of the most important things that helped me get through my treatment was something that I told my friend Doug, who was fighting his own battle with leukemia. I told him, it's okay to cry, we all do it. This isn't an easy journey we must face. Take each day as it comes and if you have to, take it hour by hour. When dealing with the unpredictability of what chemo does to the body, never let it get you down. I told him there are no downs in this journey, sometimes you will hit a plateau for a bit but then come back up. As long as you view everything as a positive then it makes things easier to accept.
          Another important thing to remember with cancer is knowledge. The saying "knowledge is power" is more true than ever when facing cancer. The more you learn about the type of cancer you have and the specific treatment you will be receiving, the easier it is to understand how and why your body may feel a certain way. But don't let one thing you read control how you view your outcome. I personally don't care how bad a doctor says something is because no one knows my body except me. In fact things like that drive me, they drive me to prove them wrong. No one can and never will be able to tell me I can't do something. It may just be because that is how I was raised but whatever the reason I am glad that is who I am. It has helped me become the man I am now and drives me to help others facing the same thing I did.