Second chances

Yesterday, I turned five years old. And while you may think I'm speaking metaphorically, I'm actually being quite literal.

Five years ago yesterday I had the life-saving surgery that altered the course of my history after 15 years of wrestling with a disease that wouldn't let go and almost killed me. My father often reminds me of how I cheated death, and I know he's entirely right about that. That's why I never call her name in vain, no vaya a ser that she's hanging around these parts and remembers I'm one of the ones she didn't get when she intended.

I also know how truly Dracula speaks when he tells Jonathan Harker that there are worse things than death.

That's why, in this second chance at life I was given, I pay attention to and relish almost every minute I am given to breathe without pain and to shine with the fulgor of a faraway star that burns brightly against the cielo of my soul.

Long-time journalist Leroy Severs has a blog on NPR (and a weekly podcast) titled My Cancer in which he shares his on-going struggle to beat "the monster," as he calls it. I heard one of his recent podcasts in which he said that you can't go through a life-altering disease, like cancer, without leaving your old life behind and creating a new one, with brand-new attitudes and expectations.

I used to believe that was true, since that certainly has been my case, although my disease wasn't cancer. But I unfortunately know people who've gone through terrible illnesses and have not changed their old ways and have failed to learn much about how seismic a change a chronic and possibly recurring disease (as mine also is) should be.

Grappling with and succeeding against illness (even if momentarily) is life's way of giving us a chance to learn to "suck the marrow," or chuparse el hueso, as we'd say back home, of every day you get that's not marred by overwhelming pain and suffering. (BTW, I thought the phrase in English was my own translation of our saying related to sucking the very last bits of a juicy pork chop, but I actually found it sometime ago in reading Thoreau!).

I am blessed because I learned the lesson. Every day for me is a gift from God and I try to treat it with the reverence it deserves.

No longer will days fly by me, unnoticed and untraveled, because I'm in too much of a hurry to be or to do or to get or to please. No longer will days conclude without my feeling I have lived them to the fullest I could within each day's list of possibilities and challenges.

Five years ago yesterday, the Heavens saw it fit to give me, a wretched mortal, a second chance at living a better life. By God, I renew my pledge each day, such a second chance cannot and shall not be wasted.