Ok so I've done the 3 month scan, finally a clear one. Start thinking, great! Got this pretty much dealt with go on with life.

Then as my wife and I were discussing things like retirement options, should we just save money or use some of it to purchase retirement property now so it's paid off etc, I begin to think. "Should I even be bothering to plan past 2 or three years?" Is this a case of, like one footwear product I tested (do that for a living, destructive testing) don't plan on any longer than the 2 day pass at Disney World?

My wife's a bit younger than I, and she keeps saying she wants me to live another 30 years. I tell her "no problem" but I always wonder if I"m just "blowing sunshine."

How do you deal with this stuff. Does this feeling, along with the recovery pain, pass with time as more and more clear scans come to pass?

Just wondering.

Practicing what I preach, I got through the treatment and went back to my Real Life and all the plans thereof without looking back. I am not planning for a reoccurrence. It doesn't make sense to me, at this point when I am healthy, to make plans as though I will not be for many more years. Yes, I go for the regular checkups. Beyond that, however, I will not give cancer any more time in my life. It may come back, or I may get another kind, but I truly believe that to spend any of the healthy time I have worrying about what might happen is a waste. We never plan to be run over by a bus, but lots of people are. Maybe the odds for that are a little less, but the principle is the same. Live for today, plan for tomorrow. I told the ENT/oral surgeon who is presently working on me that I am going to live to be 87. He looked me right in the eye and said "That's all?" So go right ahead with your retirement planning -- you may well live to enjoy it!
Joanna, who takes the saying "make hay while the sun shines" as a directive

Joanna has really got this one right. There are plenty of other things that can take you down before this cancer or another cancer does. Step off the curb at the wrong time, and cancer is a non issue. While I have learned to live in the moment more than I ever have before in my life, that doesn't mean that I do not think about tomorrow. I now try to get the most out of everyday and do the things which are important. I don't suffer fools for very long any more, and I fill my days with satisfying and meaningful pursuits. Cancer survivorship teaches us all the obvious. Life is finite. Don't waste it. And letting it occupy a disproportionate amount of your thought process is wasting your time. You cannot change what is going to be. You can tip the scale a little in your favor through knowledge and lifestyle, but that is the best that you can do. Part of living completely is planning for the future, if it is next week, next month, or five years from now, it makes no difference. You will have to try to come to terms with the fact that you can have something horrible like this happen again in your life. If you do, you may survive it again. But I will bet that you didn't spend your pre-cancer life worrying about not being here in one year or five years. Yet it was quite possible that something could have taken you down. So the trick is keeping perspective. I can't remove cancer from my mind or from who I am now. Particularly because of OCF and dealing with so many others who are in the fight, both as patients, caregivers and doctors. But outside of the functions of dealing with it through the foundation daily, I try, NOT ALWAYS SUCCESSFULLY, to not let it be my dominant thought. I am planning to do many things over the next ten years, some related to bringing the death rate from this disease down, some related to more personal experiences. If I do not stay focused on those future events I would withdraw in anxiety and fear. The future is what we must continue to look at, but it is like a moving target, constantly changing with new opportunities and obstacles to getting there always presenting themselves to us. Live positively. Live strong. Live with an eye on the future.

Yes to the previous posts: although we always talk about living one day at a time, it doesn't mean that we have no hope for the future no matter how uncertain it may be. I do set a long term goal for myself and that is to write a book after my retirement from my present job about my experience of fighting cancer and depression, which hopefully can give other cancer patients, especially those with stage 4, some positive insight. I am talking about a plan that will be implemented at least six years later from now. Can I live that long given the seriousness of my cancer? Only God knows. This is something beyond my or my doctors' control. So why worry about it?

Karen stage 4 tonsil cancer diagnosed in 9/01.

Ok friends (and I mean that) I consider myself properly spanked.

Read the above posts. Remembered the times when I've done some incredibly stupid things in cars, or should have been on an airliner that crashed but wasn't, or just have taken a lot of rides in a Dongguan taxi (probably the most dangerous activity of the bunch). All things that could cause my premature demise other than cancer, and I find worrying about what "might" happen, and letting it work it's way into my thoughts is, just as Brian said, wasting my time.

In day to day life, I try not to let this get to me, no one really wants to hear about it all the time anyway. Some things are just fact and are there, shoulder strength shot to heck, I don't drink anymore and I tend to threaten smokers with the fire extinguisher. But I also tend to do things I maybe wouldn't have if I hadn't gotten this disease, such as body surf, ride elephants, eat some pretty strange foods.

I suppose it is all what you make it, probably at that time and moment, just allowed some negative thoughts to come in that I shouldn't have.

Still don't know where the heck I'm going to retire to though.

Thanks again for the "jolt" Joanna, Brian and Karen.

Bob

Hi All
Wish I had found this site before, maybe I wouldn't have fell in to this big black hole, and instead of 'what if' perhaps now I can do maybe?
My cancer is not yet invasive, but I know there will be many more biopsys and a probable op with a skin flap, but listening to you guys I will now try to enjoy this waiting game instead of fighting it!
Cheers to you all, wherever you are.
helen

Just to clarify, my comments weren't meant to yank you back..... but now as an older, more seasoned observer, who has fought in wars against others, who has survived helicopter crashes, plane crashes, auto accidents, cancer and other diseases, and more.... it is not that I do not believe that anyone of these could be the end, just that I do not intend to quit, go quietly, or lose hope that the future is bright and awaiting me. I think that the analogy that I like the best, is that we are like a piece of raw marble when we are born. Life chisels at us with sharp blows, many deep and painful, chipping away bits of us in the process, to finally reveal the person we really are. Cancer is one more of life's blows that define and shape us; perhaps more so than those who did not fight for life itself. No one grows without adversity in his or her life. There are literally millions of cancer survivors living in the US today. That fact alone helps me to believe that I too will go on. I just came back from filming a one-hour interview with the Lance Armstrong Foundation on survivorship. Listening to the many stories of survivorship there only strengthened my resolve that I will continue on.

Hi Bob,

Some more stuff so to show that you are at least as sane as I am, For the first year everything I did was as though it was the last time. I didn't really plan beyond the next dr's visit. The second year things changed and I started to plan out a bit farther. Recently my wife and I are planning a trip to Europe with friends 6 months from now. Yes in the last year I got my will and trust set up, but everyone should do that (and at a much younger age than we did).

The bottom line is as time goes by you think about it less and less.

Well I am still planning for the future, but I am not as worried about outliving my money as I used to be!

Danny G.

Well, I am getting better about all this worrying or not worrying about the future. At least now I mostly look at trips to doc for follow ups as a good excuse for a day off work and a trip to H.K.

As for long term plans like retirement, on one hand I guess I should be thinking about that, my case is somewhat different, because I don't even know where I want to retire to, even what country much less what part of what country. On the other hand, that would require me to acknowledge that I'm getting older. Geez, 2 years from now they'll be sending me an AARP card!! YIKES!