Doing nothing is still a choice

Let me first begin with a metaphor... it snowed during the night.  Chocolate, native to Hawaii, hates snow.  He rarely surprises me by playing happily in the snow.  This morning I took him out.  Whenever there's fresh snow on the ground, I usually put on his coat and booties and let him walk leash-free.  I want him to have control in deciding where to go in the snowy land.  He peed twice.  I was walking down the street following our usual route when I realized he was not keeping up.  I turned around and I see him pausing in the middle of the sidewalk.  He was visibly uncomfortable with the snow.  I asked him if he wanted to come with me.  He stood there thinking about what he wanted to do then he turned back.  He was running back home.  I turned back and followed him.  He was happily waiting by the door.  He had made the choice not to poop.  What it means for him... he has to deal with the consequences that come with that choice.  He'll hold until later this morning or when he tells me he needs to go just to ensure he's warm and comfortable indoors.

The point is.. only we can make our own choices and we are products of our own choices.  Each choice comes with consequences.  Consequences can be either good and bad.  That's the simple truth.

As I am approaching the two-year mark since I got that phone call telling me I had cancer (January 15th), I am reminded of the second appointment I had with Dr. Diaz-Montes with an interpreter.  After I gained better understanding about my treatment options, I asked how much time I had left if I did nothing.  The interpreter was baffled and asked me, "Do I voice that?"  Duh.  Yes.   I could see she struggled because it was against her own value system.  She proceeded to voice my question.  Dr. Diaz-Montes was shocked.  Not surprising.  After all, she is in the business of saving lives.  After Dr. Diaz-Montes regained her composure, she said that if I did nothing I had two years to live.  I processed this.  Dr. Diaz-Montes insisted, "Don't do nothing!"  I said that I had to consider ALL the options and that doing nothing was still an option.

Treatment options include chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, hormone therapy, and medications.  Those treatment options are not guarantees.  Oncologists use experiences with previous patients to help them establish the prognosis for future patients.  Remember as I said in an earlier post (http://naomicancerjourney.blogspot.com/2015/03/cured-or-not.html), there's no cure for cancer.  It can be controlled.  Sometime the cancer gets to the point that it cannot be controlled anymore.

Why did I consider doing nothing as one of my possible options?  I had read the pros and cons of each treatment option.  I have spoken with cancer survivors who said that if they had to do it all over again, they would have opted not to do anything.  Surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiations messed them up so much that they felt they missed out on having the quality life.  And they struggle with the aftermath up to this day.  While I am fortunate that my cancer was detected very early preventing the need for chemotherapy and radiation, I still have some lingering aftermath from everything I went through.  Those are fading slowly though.  The process I went through to control my cancer was definitely not peachy.

I was talking with a friend the other day telling him that when it is my time to go, it is my time to go.  I am not scared.  He got really upset by this.  I think that the cancer helped me feel at peace about death.  I remember when I got the call, I was freaking out thinking about death.  In reality, death is a natural part of the life cycle.  

I recently learned of someone who made the choice to do nothing to control his cancer.  A good number of people were upset with his choice.   Ultimately, it was HIS choice to make.  He realized that his cancer was too aggressive and he wanted to spend his final days enjoying life and appreciating his connections.  Remember, by choosing not to fight the cancer is not exactly the same as giving up.  It is not an act of resignation.  It is a choice to maximize on life as much as possible with the remaining time he had. I had to wrestle with this choice myself.  I thought about two options.  I could use the remaining two years I had to travel and see more of the world.  I could write more.  I could see all of my favorite people again.   Or I could go through treatments to control the cancer.  Those two paths were significantly different.  Our choices pave our paths in life and we deal with the good and bad consequences as we progress in our own journeys.

Now that the two-year mark is approaching, I am deep in my own introspection.  People often ask me if I regret going through what I did.  Based on my studies in Buddhism, life should not be of regrets.  Just roll with your choices and embrace the lessons that come with them.  The answer is I do not regret anything I went through the past two years.  It sucked, yes.  There were bad and good consequences which I accepted as part of the path I have paved for myself.  The bottom line, I am eternally grateful that I had the freedom to make informed choices for myself.