Two Stories and Living Out the "Yow!"

Two stories came to my inbox yesterday. One of a man who died of Melanoma even though they had found it in Stage 1. It caught my breath. The other of a friend who didn't find it until Stage 3, yet came through with flying colors. "It's like winning the lottery at this point," Jimi said.

Both stories are good for me to hear. The first one because I need to remember to be vigilant even though Melanoma doesn't feel like anything. The second one because we are not always the ones who are the statistics, sometimes we are the ones on the other side of the 65%. The 35% who do survive Melanoma 3 (or the 9% who don't survive Melanoma 1).

Statistically, they can say you have an X% chance, but in actuality, they can't say anything. Not about you, personally, where you will fall in the statistics. You, personally, could be on either side.

Even though I'm taking drastic measures - the crazy health fanatic route - to become a Corporal Territory Unfriendly to Cancer, my mind keeps slipping back to discounting that it's serious. Yet, it is. They don't *know* that there's not more melanoma lurking in me; they think the biopsy took it all. But they didn't biopsy every abnormal cell of my skin (never mind eyes or colon, where Melanoma can also show up first). Now that I know I am *capable* of Melanoma, is any cell safe?! You could wonder. I'm one of every 62 people in the US who have a lifetime risk, now. That's a 2,000% increase (two-thousand, no typo) since the 1930s, when, ironically, the natural protocol that I will be following was first developed as the "Gerson Method." With this method, according to a statistic from 10 years ago, 100% of people with Melanoma 1 or 2 had no recurrence as of five years later. (I feel a little better about where I fall in a 100% kind of statistic...though, there's still always the one-tenth-of-one-percent person who gets rounded off the total...)

All of that said, here's what I believe about statistics. We don't die early. My days were appointed before I was conceived in the womb. Whether I get hit by a bus getting off the plane in Belize (should it land at a bus station), or die in six months from Melanoma nobody found, or live to be 96 just to have the license to speak my mind (like my Grandma did!) - it is all in God's hands. This diagnosis doesn't change anything; it is just another part of regular life. I will die when my Appointed Days are up. To me that means something about God completing in my life what He set out to do with me - no matter how short or long that seems to fall in my mind, or in the minds of those who love me.

Imagine the awesome kind of abandon you can live with when nobody can steal your life. I don't mean reckless...but Fearless. When life doesn't have a little kink like this now and then, you can forget you believe that. You can forget to live with that abandon.

The stories are helpful. I need to be vigilant. Maybe I'll get crazy fanatical about it (like every other natural health aficionado!) Not to save my life - it's saved for the days I have to live it - but to make the utter most of it. Wouldn't it be great to burst into Heaven with a "Yow! That was awesome!!!!" rather than a feeble "So, my time is really up then...?"

Here's to the living out the "Yow!"

Love and the Usual Adoration,
Susan