Prelude: Who I Was

Like many of you dealing with cancer, I’m in and out of the hospital a lot. I’ve made friends with my nurses and doctors, and the process has been easier because of it. But many of these people I see so often they may as well be my coworkers really don’t know anything about who I was 1,218 days ago. Back then I was a very different person.

Before I had my stroke, I lived a different life. I was a college student, going to school out in Ohio to pursue my dreams of graduating with a degree in anything that would allow me to commission as an Officer in the Marines when I graduated. My days consisted of classes, running, lifting, and drinking, often not in that order. But even though I had unorthodox aspirations for where I would go after I graduated, I still was a fairly normal dude.

I was a normal dude with sort-of dreams. I mean, nowadays my dreams are to celebrate my 25th birthday, regrow my mustache one day, and be able to drink beer again. While it is nice to have goals to strive for, I didn’t grow up wanting to be a 25 year-old someday. I didn’t become who I am because I wanted grow a mustache. I became who I am because I had dreams to be a part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to push the limits of myself and see what I was truly capable of. I wanted to prove that I was bigger and badder than anything that could rise up to challenge me. That’s why I wanted to be a Marine.

Turns out you can face the same challenges with a lot less red tape if you just get stage IV cancer instead. Just because I’ll never fulfill my dream of becoming a Marine, doesn’t mean I have to let go of who I was and become what cancer has allowed me to be. For a long time I was disheartened because I would never achieve my dream, but I realized there are things cancer can’t take away from you. It took away my plans, my career, my graduation, my health, my energy, my physical strength. But it can’t take away my drive, my sense of honor, my desire to protect those close to me.

In a way, I feel this is a journey we all must face. Patients, friends, family all have to make sacrifices at some point to deal with cancer. But it’s so important that we never lose sense of who we were before everything went wrong, and instead find ways to let ourselves shine through the situations life and cancer have put us in. After all, cancer doesn’t make us who we are.