{"id":1140,"date":"2007-10-19T18:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-19T18:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janaremy.com\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2007-10-19T18:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-19T18:38:00","slug":"what-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janaremy.com\/pilgrimsteps\/2007\/10\/19\/what-if\/","title":{"rendered":"What if…."},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo: taken sometime during the latter half of my chemo treatments. At this time I weighed just over 70 lbs and had lost all my hair (including eyebrows and eyelashes). I’m wearing my wig in this pic. I was using crutches to get around much of the time, still unable to use a prosthetic limb comfortably following my amputation surgery a few months earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d never had cancer. It’s a big question, one that looms every morning as I get out of bed and put on my prosthetic leg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wonder how having had the cancer has held me back in so many ways. I deal daily with pain and sores. I have chronic issues related to the toxicity of the chemo. I limp. I am often tired and somewhat prone to depression. Every time I have an ache somewhere I wonder if it is the cancer again. Currently I am avoiding doctors and I haven’t had a physical exam in three years.<\/p>\n

I just want to be me and not a cancer patient.<\/p>\n

But I also wonder if I hadn’t had cancer, would I be a totally different person? Would I still be a gardener<\/a>, a locavore<\/a>, a mother<\/a>, a lover of John<\/a>? A Mormon<\/a>? A Quaker<\/a>? A teacher<\/a> and writer of academic papers<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Would I love cats<\/a>? Chocolate<\/a>? Or meditating by candlelight? Would I have rowed the canals of Canterbury<\/a> or clambered up The Great Wall<\/a>? Would I be afraid of rodents<\/a>? Would I relish simple living<\/a>?<\/p>\n

I suspect that I would be a wearer of high heels and a swimmer in oceans<\/a>. And a cartwheeler in meadows of green grass. That I would be a hiker of the Narrows and walker of the Pilgrim’s Path.<\/p>\n

But what if not?<\/p>\n

And what if my cancer came back tomorrow? Or my kitties run away? Or I run away? Or what if my latest insurance claims are denied and my leg breaks and I lose my job and the Mormons excommunicate me and I make John miserable and I am unkind to my children and I am just so so so tired that I never get out of bed again?<\/p>\n

What if?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: taken sometime during the latter half of my chemo treatments. At this time I weighed just over 70 lbs and had lost all my hair (including eyebrows and eyelashes). I’m wearing my wig in this pic. 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