TUESDAY, APRIL 1

I begin my first blog.  Ever.  I have felt compelled to do so since my diagnosis of lymphoma on the day before Christmas.  Immediately, without hesitation, I wanted to scream to the world and announce a new energy that I couldn't explain.  Admittedly, I have always loved challenges, material for a good story, and best of all, attention.  Could it really be true that in my head I was thinking cancer was a perfect combination of them all?  

Quickly reality set in.  Not all challenges have been welcomed ones.  We all have fragments of life that come at us unexpectedly and unplanned.  They interrupt our perfectly planned future.  Often times, the element of life that we must learn to grieve the most is the loss of that assumed future.

That being said, many times my life has proven that my biggest gifts come from my biggest challenges.  So I knew instantly as my oncologist said, "I'm afraid your tests all came back positive for Stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma," that somewhere, somehow, there would be a beaming light revealed to me later.

I'd like to start by backing up a few years.

In 1990 I was traveling the country on a bus as a producer of a musical tour.  It was called HeartStrings and benefitted local AIDS charities in each city.  We were loading the bus one early Monday morning in Indianapolis.  I had had a sad and difficult weekend, so I took a short stroll into the park across the street smack in the middle of downtown.  As I walked through the snow, I saw a shiny brass plaque in the center of a gazebo.  I brushed the snow away and read it. "Lilacs will bloom here in the Spring."  What a beautiful metaphor for hope.

I immediately went back to the bus and sat next to my friend John and told him what I had seen. He told me that the future is always beautiful if you choose to see it that way.

For many years after that, John gave me lilacs on my birthday.  John has since passed on, truly one of the most difficult losses of my assumed future, and yet I know he is still telling me that the future is always beautiful.  Lilacs are only available for a few short weeks here in LA and my friend Diane brought me a huge bunch today.

Instantly I was filled with hope.  I have realized just recently that when I am thinking positively, I am thinking about things that are real . . . the love and support of friends and family, the knowledge that my body is healing from the chemotherapy treatments, and most of all, the tremendous opportunity I have, thanks to my illness, to stop the speed of life and take time to reflect on what is important.

In contrast, when I am thinking negative thoughts, I am stressed and worried over what might happen.  It is not real.  Granted that I really have nothing to be stressed over right now.  I'm not naive.  I recognize that everyone else has jobs and families and commitments that cause frustration.  When I get back into the work world, I too will be back gritting my teeth over why someone at work will not do their job the way I WANT IT DONE.

But for now I am blessed to have the beautiful luxury of peace.  Another of the many gifts of cancer.  I focus on discovering more blessings.  They seem to come up every day.  It might be as simple as staying in bed as long as I choose, or it could be as grand as my sister coming to stay with me for an entire month.  The gifts are plentiful.  The pain is minor in comparison.

All this said, I still worry that I am loving the attention and the material for a good story.  When I asked my sister if that was wrong, she answered, "Anything that makes you love having cancer, cannot be too bad for you."

And thus I write.