By Jama Beasley

When Sandra Horning, MD, a professor at Stanford, handed me a letter to take to the Social Security Administration, my only goal was to live long enough to actually get benefits. I was told, “Two-year wait for Medicare.” If that was not shocking enough, the words in the letter ate at my heart—“terminal cancer.” Up until that moment, the whole experience wasn’t real. Once I saw it in print, I knew I could die.

So, what do you do when you find out you are dying (besides seek a medical cure)? Naturally, all the things you postponed until “someday.” Well, bang! Someday is here!

I sat down and spent lots of time making a list of all the someday things I would try to accomplish before I died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The list seemed excessively long, which showed me that 1) I was way too optimistic about recovery; 2) I would kill myself trying to fulfill the list; and 3) there were many things that could/would bring pleasure to my life that I had denied myself.
The list was designed by importance—big things first.

• Travel to Italy to the island of Sardinia, where I had spent two years with 40 men on a mountaintop in the late 1960s just to be with my husband.
  
• Buy the obligatory convertible—all white—that had been my idea of a good time each time I saw someone on a clear spring day cruising along, Beach Boys music blaring away, hair blowing in the breeze.
  
• Get a state-of-the-art computer with all the bells and whistles.It was the smaller things that brought surprise and deep joy.
  
• Watch old home movies, sort family photos, and commit verbal histories to tape so my children and grandchildren will have that history.
  
• Visit old friends and spend time letting them know just how important they have been in my life.
  
• Dismiss people that made me miserable and choose new friends who brought me joy.I knew I had survived the crisis when I had worked my way down the list to all the minor things.
  
• Clean out my underwear drawer so no one would ever see just how bad it looked, and throw away my “favorite” ugly sleeping clothes. This was very important because the first year after diagnosis I refused to buy new underwear if I was going to die.
  
• Raise two baby ducks to age 2 and then release them at the Country Club because in my insanity it meant I always had to be home. (It’s hard to find a duck sitter.

Then came the day five years later when I got a phone call from my life insurance company advising me that they would like to pay off my policy! I had never heard of such a thing. They explained that my confirmed diagnosis put me in their liability category since they would eventually have to pay off and since the company was selling, they would like to just give me the entire face value of the policy in money. My life insurance paid me! How many people actually get to cash that check?!

Nine years have passed since that painful time I carried the letter to Social Security. The convertible is worn out. I have gone through three computers. And my underwear needs to be replaced again.

It took a cancer diagnosis to teach me how to live my life and I will always be grateful for that transformation. I am a happy person who knows the value of life and understands the importance of a good list!

Jama Beasley lives in Redding, California.

Send your 700-word essays on cancer to mweber@curetoday.com.