“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
Desmond Tutu.
In the darkest moments since my diagnosis, at times it felt like all I had was hope. Perhaps I didn’t always identify it as “hope.” Sometimes, it was faith in God. Other times, it was just a pure, raw will to survive. It also manifested in my thoughts when I looked at my husband and knew I could not leave him. We had way too many years left to live together. Having hope was not always a conscious decision either. There was just simply no other way.
Hope can be defined as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a thing to happen.” It can also be defined as “a feeling of trust.” These simple definitions mean so much within the context of my diagnosis. I hoped that I would survive my surgery, that the surgery would successfully remove the tumor without completely damaging my brain, that the radiation would keep the cancer at bay, and that I would ultimately be one of the success stories. I also put my complete and total trust in my neurosurgeon, my oncologist, my radiation team, and the whole slew of medical professionals working to save my life. I didn’t just hope for these things though. I prayed. I begged God to protect me. I cried to my family that this retched disease would not kill me.
I never made a conscious decision to choose happiness and positivity when first learning my diagnosis. In fact, looking at the situation with such a hopeful attitude was actually contrary to how I typically viewed things in my life. I had always been such a cynical, negative person. Yet, without a second thought, I found myself determined beyond question that I would survive this.
There was also no choice, but to be strong and hopeful. One particular situation always comes to mind when thinking about these feelings. After my surgery, as soon as I was cleared to get out of bed, I took my IV stand and started walking laps around the unit. I never thought about it, I just did it. At first, I couldn’t do it on my own. After about a day, I built up my stamina to walk without any assistance. Sure, I was slow and unsteady, but I did it. I had also colored a picture of butterflies and hung it on the IV stand, so that whenever a nurse or another patient saw me, they smiled. On the last day, just before I was released, one of my neurosurgeon’s team members saw me walking the unit. She stopped me and said, “You’re going to be okay, Mrs. K. I know it.”
On the flipside, my roommate in the hospital did not seem to be very hopeful. Looking back, I wish I could have spoken to her and talked about what she was feeling. I was so focused on my survival that I didn’t stop to think about what she was going through. She refused to get out of bed, despite the nurses and doctors urging her every few hours to do so. Every instruction the medical staff gave her, she ignored. I overheard a phone conversation she had, in which she was explaining that she didn’t ask people for help and was frustrated that she needed help. As I waited for the endless paperwork the day I was released from the hospital, I overheard my rommate’s doctors telling her that she would not be released for quite some time. I find myself thinking about her a lot, and I hope she eventually found her inner strength, her hope.
There are times when my strength falters. When something negative happens, I don’t always handle it well. At times, I feel irrationally upset by trivial issues and situations, which don’t deserve my time and valuable energy. Yet, no matter how upset these minor issues can make me, I always come back to the most important things and what truly matters – that I am still here, living, breathing, thriving and surviving. And so, I continue to live day-by-day, expecting and trusting that life will continue because really without that hope, what do I have?
