My incurable cancer

In February of 2021, after a dreadful Covid year that we all shared, alone, I retired and was simultaneously diagnosed with a rare cancer called a liposarcoma and told by the surgeon that I had a 50-50 chance of being alive in 5 years. All my plans changed. I had all sorts of ideas what the first few years of retirement would be like and getting chemotherapy with an eye toward surgery was not at all what I had in mind. I had thought to relocate to Colorado where my daughter and granddaughters live and where I could build a community of people who shared my interests and values, had put my condo on the market and had gotten an offer, and had cleared out all my stuff so I could move with just what I needed. And then… I am staying in the NY area because my oncologist and surgeon are at Memorial Sloan Kettering and there are few medical centers that treat my cancer. I am getting chemotherapy every 3 weeks, and trying to build a new life for myself in 6 week intervals between scans. Kate’s perspective and humor, her podcasts, have been so helpful to me in living life now, as it is. Also, meditation, therapy, support groups and finding a way to volunteer and contribute in the area where I live. I’m definitely making progress on this but at times the grief is overwhelming, for what might have been, for a limitless future, for expectations of seeing my grandchildren graduate high school, college, maybe marry. I treasure the moments I have now, but even doing that sometimes feels overwhelming – how do you make every moment meaningful and important and not like I’m not wasting precious time that I will never have again… Too many hours of Law and Order reruns, for example.