Raya’s First Pregnancy. She’s due June 19th, 2024, and was confirmed pregnant with more than one.
Our baby princess Raya is all grown, and currently expecting her first litter of puppies due June 19th. We’re so excited for her, and for the families who will take her puppies home!
It’s been ages since I’ve done much in the way of writing about my cancer journey here, but it’s time to start writing again.
A snapshot of my cancer and faith journeys, and the bridging of two worlds into one centered around God.
It’s a wonderful feeling when you know that you’ve made a difference for others, and little do these friends of mine know just how much they’ve been helping me, as well. My family has once again been challenged in our lives this past summer, and as we’ve struggled to make sense of things all over again, all I’ve ever needed to do for inspiration and guidance is to look at these friends of mine, almost like a mirror image of my own family, as a reminder of what we’ve needed to KEEP doing.
You can put your heart and soul into something for years, towards healing, evolving, learning, growing, forgiving and forgetting, or doing whatever you feel that you need to do to overcome the challenges that life throws at us. It can hurt to have invested so much time and effort towards something, only to have not achieved the end result that you wanted, but this doesn't mean that you've failed.
Writing has always been a huge outlet for me from the earliest and darkest days, and if you can understand something well enough to write about it, you can find ways to overcome it and heal from it as well. It's just in our human nature to hold our pain within, and in essence we create our own mental prisons.
We're creatures of habit. We stick with what we know, even when it might be hurting us, and even when we're broken inside. It's easy to just do nothing and keep suffering, but is that what's right? It's hard to change your ways, to change your lifestyle, to change your friends, your social circles, your routines, your beliefs, your views, and your attitudes, but sometimes that's what we have to do in order to get ourselves out of the holes that we're in, and to ultimately thrive again.
The irony had not been lost on me that, literally, a week after my 5 year oncology follow-up for testicular cancer, that I would be hopping on a plane to attend the celebration of life service for a young man who had died of his cancer after 9. I’d known periods of huge contrasts in my life after cancer before, but none like this. Here I was quietly celebrating 5 years cancer free and finally feeling the closure that I had longed to feel for years, and so much weight being lifted off of my shoulders, yet feeling so humbled at the same time by the death of my friend, while prepping my eulogy speech to deliver at his celebration of life service on July 8th.
Being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 33, robbed me of every bit of peace and sense of security that I had. Every bit of my life, three decades of hard work, and all of my hopes and dreams with my wife and two young children were suddenly up in the air every month, dependent on that next round of scans coming back clear, and no new evidence of disease. Anything external to this terrible life experience that was costing me on top of that, was just too expensive for me to keep around, period.
t's bad enough to have sources of pain in our lives as it is, but cancer will push you far beyond your limits, without mercy. It doesn't matter if it's a thing, a belief, an attitude, or a person that's hurting you. You have to put yourself first, love and care for yourself first, and find the courage to let go of other sources of pain in our lives.
Soulmate friends are people that can just connect with me and get me in a way that others don't, or those that are a perfect complement and have been exactly what I've needed them to be. They're people that have helped me understand myself and grow, and those that have helped me laugh, forget, and heal.
This morning, my wife asked me if during my darkest days of PTSD, I ever had thoughts of killing my entire family. No. Never. There's a terrible story in the news, one of those murder/suicide "family delete" type tragedies, where a woman had been suffering from PTSD and possibly other things, stemming from a health crisis in one of her young children.
I was never going to get cancer. It just wasn't in my life plan. Young adults don't get cancer, only older people. Even when young adults do get cancer, it was only something that happened to other people, not me. A medical school friend of my wife's died of a young adult cancer while only in her early-20's, and just a year shy of graduating from medical school and becoming a doctor. It was so sad and tragic, especially after so much hard work, but it still never registered in my mind that this could happen to me, until I was diagnosed with testicular cancer at the age of 33. Cancer wasn't ever in my life plan, until suddenly, it was.
We're all beautiful beings inside that have something unique to offer the world. Evolve yourself beyond the stereotypes and societal expectations, and have the courage to express your individuality into the world and make a difference, because the world needs it. Jordan's nickname wasn't "Sunshine" for no reason. Despite what he had been through, even while fighting through his late recurrence, he always found a way to shine. We all need to follow Jordan's example, and do the same.
Every single testicular cancer survivor and their caregivers should be aware of the possibility of low or irregular testosterone levels after cancer, and that no, the other testicle might not necessarily ‘pick up the slack,’ as is commonly believed. It isn’t that simple. Every medical professional should also be aware of this possibility with testicular cancer survivors, especially if they’re symptomatic of hypogonadism.
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