Whatever Life We Get is Bonus

After what can only be described as an emotionally insane week, I've finally felt my brain start to rest a bit. Not sure where this all came from, but I guess from time to time, we're all allowed to flip out about where our life is at, where it's going and how to maximize it as best we can.

I think my freak out was due in no small part to the four year anniversary of my college graduation having been on May 3. One of my best friends, who has been in college the entire time since I left, just got her first job and is making a very, very significant amount of money more than I am. Which is frustrating because though her four years have been filled with studying, and I'm not going to say that was easy and stress free, I've spent the last four years working hard, getting stressed and recently realizing that I no longer care to be super successful at what I've chosen to do and now it's time for a chance. Granted, she is going to be a P.A., and so she rightfully should make more money, but it didn't stop me from kind of taking a good look around and saying can I do more? Can I do more without working myself into the ground? And will I be happy? Big questions like these stress me out because they have no answers. But I've finally calmed down.

Yesterday, I was on CNN.com and came across this article. It really just proved the point that though we all have problems, they could always be worse. Maybe I am freaking out over some things, but at least those problems can be solved. Not everyone's can. And at least my problems have to do with the experiences that come from life, and being in love, and working hard and following my dreams. Not everyone gets those chances.

Whatever life we get is bonus

Editor's note: The following post is written by Miles Levin, a young cancer patient profiled on tonight's "360." Miles' personal blog can be read at www.carepages.com, page name "LevinStory."

Through his blog, Miles has talked about cancer and life with tens of thousands of readers around the world.

Looking through my living room window, I suspect being outside would feel wonderful, but I really wouldn't know. As I write this from my bed, my entire body feels saturated in a sticky, toxic nausea, with chemotherapy pumping through my 18-year-old veins. Like Michael Jackson's moonwalk, chemotherapy has this strange way of moving a person another step towards life and death at the same time.

Twenty three months ago, I was diagnosed with stage IV rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare pediatric muscle cancer affecting only 350 children a year. With odds like that, and with a 20 percent chance of survival, I can only deduce two possibilities about the universe: God's plan is evident in every little shifting of the breeze, or it's totally random. I don't see how there could be much middle ground.

I remember my first chemo round, staring at the ceiling and trying not to cry. The agony was stunning. I've long since learned to go ahead and cry. How could this have happened? Yet as with anything that happens, it happens, and then suddenly you find it has happened, and more things keep continuing to happen. Chemotherapy has instilled in me a visceral understanding that all bad things will pass in time ... but that all good things will too.

I set out on a 19-month course of treatment, chronicling the journey on an online blog. Little did I know that my little Web site intended to keep extended family and friends informed would find readers all across the country and even the world, including such countries as Japan, Australia, Germany, Brazil.

My journey became our journey, with treatment finishing last December. For a brief, hopeful month in January, it appeared to have been successful. My scans were clear. But, as is so common with cancer, there were still sub-detectable rogue cells lurking in distant corners of my body. Within weeks, they swarmed forth again and my body was infested once more.

A recurrence of my kind of cancer has been hitherto incurable, although I still cling to a slim ray of hope. But in all likelihood, I am in the last few months of my short life.

Unlike many cancer patients, I don't have much anger. The way I see it, we're not entitled to one breath of air. We did nothing to earn it, so whatever we get is bonus. I might be more than a little disappointed with the hand I've been dealt, but this is what it is. Thinking about what it could be is pointless. It ought to be different, that's for sure, but it ain't. A moment spent moping is a moment wasted.

I accept what is to come, but I cannot rid myself of a deep mourning for all those experiences -- college, marriage, children, grandchildren -- that will probably never be mine to celebrate. What solace I do find is in the knowledge that I have done everything I can to transmute this terribleness into something positive by showing as many people as I can how to endure it with a smile.

I don't believe you can ask for any more, but if I could ask for something, it would be to be able to go outside into the glorious spring air, feeling healthy and blissfully clueless as to how lucky I was for it, if only just for an hour.


Oh and I promise to stop the serious posts soon!