I know when you read this title it was a little bit confusing how something so terrible like cancer could be such a good thing. It is a difficult concept to comprehend, but I think the best way to describe it is that there is always light in the darkness.
My family's cancer story started off back in 2006 when my dad went in for a normal doctors appointment. He went in, and the doctor asked if he could run a few extra tests just to be safe. One of those tests he ran that day was called a PSA test, which can help detect prostate cancer.
Now the majority of the men with prostate cancer are over the age of 70, and my dad was 42 at the time, so not much was thought of the test. That was until we got the results back. My dad's results were abnormally high, so his doctor recommended he see someone else to do some more extensive testing. When those results came back, it had been confirmed he had prostate cancer.
In the beginning, my dad had a 15% chance of survival.
As time went on, we discovered that the cancer was moving quickly and they needed to act fast. My parents collectively decided that he needed to be moved to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which is the top cancer program in the world. Since my dad's case was so rare, they admitted him immediately. They began treatments, and it required my parents to be gone for weeks on end. The treatments continued in Houston for months, but in the end, he seemed to be in the clear.
The past 12 years have been spent celebrating every year as a milestone.
We travel more, we spend more time together, and we live our lives as if we may not have another year.
In a situation like this, we are not guaranteed anything. I am not guaranteed another Christmas, another vacation, or even another week. In fact, no one is promised any of these, but it took us going through cancer for me to realize this. We learned so many things from this event, and we have brought awareness to the fact men can get prostate cancer before they're required to check for it.
We talk a lot about how different our lives are because of this experience and we all agree we wouldn't want it any other way.
