Ben,

I was 33 years old when I was diagnosed, I had a young family, made a fantastic living and had almost the exact same questions and views as you did when I first came across these forums three years ago.

When I was first diagnosed, I thought more about what it would do to my family financially then how my death would affect them, I even took comfort in the fact that I'd been smart enough to have life insurance in place. Where the life insurance gave me comfort, it did very little for my wife and two young boys, who would rather have me then anything the money could buy. It was a very narrow way of thinking on my part in retrospect.

I became disabled and unable to return to my career due to complications from treatment and surgery, my wife lost her job due to the economy shortly after I started treatment. We went from making a solid six figure income to living off of the charity of others and my wife working two meagerly paying jobs to try and make ends meet. Four years (this month) later, we still make nowhere close to what we did before cancer and financially "ruined" when compared with the lucrative living we enjoyed in our former life. Yet despite our financial situation my family life is great, my wife and kids are thankful for everyday they have with me, and I them and we are loving life.

I was also caught up in percentages and odds etc as I was a businessman and rabid poker player in my previous life. It took me forever to get passed what the numbers said and realize that statistics mean absolutely nothing in individual cases. A 90% chance of living means nothing to those that fall in the 10% that don't make it. Three years ago, Brian thankfully gave me the same advice he gave you and that insight set me free in a sense. You see in my case, my odds of survival were horrible due to how late stage and involved my cancer was and thoughts of death constantly occupied my thoughts. Now, I just live every minute of everyday as it's meant to be, to the fullest as I know I'm not guaranteed my next heartbeat much less tomorrow.

I hope you eventually are set free from some of that thinking, I know I'm in a much better place because of it.

I have a blog on these forums, maybe you can relate to my journey of acceptance so I invite you to read Letting the Healing Begin under the Coping Anger/Fear section.


Welcome to OCF. Glad you found us, Best of luck.

Eric