Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday was my birthday and it was a time of fun, but also reflection. I woke up thinking that this time last year – things were so different. I was still waking up in the same bed, same room but I was waking up a year older, a year wiser, a year sadder, and a year different than the person I was in 2014.

But I was also more content with the person that I am becoming, even with the swirl of really not so happy things that happened to me last year. I realized when I woke up yesterday that I am a hell of a lot stronger than I ever realized. Maybe not physically, but mentally I am way tougher than I imagined. Cancer was only a portion of the “fun” experienced in the past year and I’m not broken yet.

To celebrate my day, I went zip lining. I had done it previously on my trip to Nicaragua and it was one of the best days of my life. Zip lining gave me a rush that I used to only get from roller coasters. The added “this equipment doesn’t look very safe and these guides are having us do tricks on the second run” element of danger only added to the experience. Here in Texas, while the equipment is a lot more failsafe and we weren’t allowed to zip upside down, I didn’t have to worry about braking. The guides did it for you. That meant I could zip faster – no worries about slamming into the guide at the end of the line. And so, I flew across the lines stretched across the winding canyons of Lake Travis. I launched myself off the platforms with almost reckless abandon, knowing that our litigious American society and the guides working the brakes provided a safety net of sorts. And I reached speeds of nearly 60 mph tethered to a steel cable and some rope. It was exhilarating.

And while I was standing on the edge of a platform, waiting for the signal to hurl myself into the air, I caught a glimpse of my scar. And I realized that had I not had the whole diagnosis, excision, and recovery thing happen last year, that I might not be able to be experiencing the thrill of zip lining right then. Who knows, maybe the cancer would have been busy spreading to my lungs, liver, brain instead – causing me unexplained medical symptoms that made me less likely to run around a hillside. Maybe I would have been undergoing procedures and tests to discover the cause of why I didn’t feel right. Maybe I would have been in the beginning stages of chemo or recovering from a surgical procedure that took much more out of my leg.

I realized that despite getting the news “you have melanoma and we need to get it out right away”, that I was able to still do the things that I had been hoping to do again. Zip lining is one of those things. Traveling is another. I have done some California road trips while out there for work and my big Nordic countries and Germany adventure is just on the horizon. I may have had cancer, but I don’t want to be just a survivor, I want to be a thriver…