Beating the cancer boss: Healing isn’t quite ‘Final Fantasy’

JUNE 17 — Once you’re a cancer patient, regardless of whether you’re cured or not, you will never be free of hospitals.

Right now I see my oncologist every three months, my surgeon every six.

I get a mammogram and if needed, an ultrasound, once a year. My latest scans have come back clear and for now, I can feel some relief.

The universe can be amusing; I had just wrapped up a boss battle in Final Fantasy VII: Remake Intergrade when my number was called.

It’s not the easiest of games but it’s not so hard that I quit out of frustration.

Like the game, my cancer journey has been full of milestones or, as I see them, “boss battles” with the final boss being my cancer.

Unlike Final Fantasy I won’t know if the bosses will stay defeated.

The threat of cancer returning looms always but here’s the thing — for some people no matter how clean they eat, how much they exercise, how zen their mindset, it comes back.

Stressing or worrying will not serve me.

This time, I am mapping my own healing journey but instead of slaying monsters, I am recalibrating my body and how I navigate life.

Once you truly understand just how fragile life is, you learn the answer to that question: do you truly want to live?

Many of us barely live.

Life becomes a series of routines, we get hung up on life’s minutiae and sometimes death comes too quickly to even have time for regrets.

I’ve written the first draft of a book, am letting a second one percolate a little in my mind while I get on with the business of living.

Physically I wish I wasn’t carrying a few extra kilos but at the hospital, I felt just so grateful to be able to walk up the stairs without feeling like I was climbing a steep mountain.

I didn’t have to cling to the banister, lean against a wall, drag one foot slowly behind the other, with each step feeling more torturous the longer it took.

For once I felt as well as I looked.

If I hadn’t been bald previously, no one would have clocked me as a cancer patient, too plump, too tan, too outwardly able-looking.

It got to the point I had to perform my cancer, with loud groans, slow shuffles, dramatic clutching of handrails because otherwise I would get stares that asked “why are you here” or “why are you sitting down/taking the lift/crowding the waiting room.”

For now I am free of the shackles of judgement and nosy parkers, with legs that (mostly) obey me and shoulders and arms that hurt a lot less.

While I will spend hours in waiting rooms for as long as I am alive, all that time isn’t wasted — I’ll just play Final Fantasy on my Switch or chase after tricky Pokémon.

No hour is wasted if it’s spent doing things you love and I hope, when I finally encounter that final boss I am destined not to beat, that I will be satisfied with how I played this game we call life.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.