The Cancer Box

The Cancer Box
by Amy Li

Inside the cancer box, it was the gray zone, how you saw it was in your heart, you could either see the light coming through the edge of the box, or you could just be completely in the dark.

No one and nobody could really tell you how well you were gonna do, and whether you gonna survive. A good oncologist would always tell you, you would be fine because they knew the power of the human mind and strength, and they also didn’t want to scare you.

The clock was dripping like the one on Salvador Dali’s wall. There is no sense of time, other than one day at a time. You woke up, still alive, went to your treatment, and used the rest of your available energy to either sleep, eat, drink, and hopefully, smile…

I still remember the chat I had that evening with my advisor David Roberts at Singularity University at NASA, David was an FBI and a Harvard graduate, if you never google his name to see his highly impressive background, he will just appear like the quiet program director of our graduate studies program. However, that night, David opened up his human side and gave me 3 pieces of advice: 1. You can instantly change your state. 2. You can separate how you feel in your body from how you feel in your mind. 3. The glass is already broken.

My mom said coming up to study at NASA saved my life. Changing doctors enabled the right cancer diagnosis, and I couldn’t be more grateful it happened while there was a loving community around me, picked me up, and helped me gain strength to come out of the box. On my birthday this year, I sent out a thank you letter to the entire community. I said, “Thank you for making this day possible”.

Outside of the cancer box, at first, was that confusion of “what now?” You have worked so hard to get out of the box, now you feel lost. Then you look at that box, and wondering whether and when you may go back… then you realize you can dance and sing around the box, while looking back, and realize that box will be forever the center of your gravity… your strength, your gratitude, your empathy to others, and your new-found love to the world…

Art by Deann Acton, our Artist of the Month.

Post Author: StageIV

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