Maintaining Hope

March 6, 2009

Today was a wonderful spring day and I have one tiny yellow daffodil in bloom!  The first flower of the season has arrived!!  To me, it represents hope.  Hope of warmer, sunnier days, hope of longer days, hope of flower gardens soon to be in full bloom, hope of renewal of simply everything. The long dark winter is over, or at the least, on it’s way out.

Hope is essential to life.  Any survivor will tell you so, whether its a survivor of illness or any other crisis. In every situation, survivors all maintained some degree of hope.  Nothing has ever been obtained without hope. I can remember in the worst times of my treatments and surgeries I would push myself, thinking, “If I can do it today, then I can do it tomorrow, too.  If I can maintain today, then I’ll be here tomorrow, too.” Soon, I got through the worst of it, one day at a time with hope.

All too often, for lung cancer patients, hope is robbed from them.  Even from those providing the care.  Doctors tell patients over and over, “you have lung cancer, get your things in order, prepare yourself for an early death.”  I know several doctors told me that.  I was given a 6-8 month prognosis– nearly 8 years ago! 

When patients are first being diagnosed though, I don’t believe they need to hear how deadly lung cancer has been in the past.  They need to hear stories of inspiration.  It’s hard enough to maintain hope with the diagnosis alone, and without it, nobody will will survive.

Today, I will have hope.  I hope for spring; I hope for a brighter and healthier tomorrow.  I hope our economy will improve.  I hope fewer people will lose their jobs.  I hope my disability will come through. I hope more funding will be raised for lung cancer research.  I even hope the NCI will direct more funds to lung cancer research.  I hope new treatments will be discovered.  I hope next year more patients will survive lung cancer. And I hope more people will know they can be part of changing the mortality of lung cancer by simply becoming involved today.

If I have hope today, I can hope tomorrow, too.

And I hope tomorrow I have more yellow daffodils in bloom.