Where courage comes from....

Right now, at this moment, I feel wonderful. I am lying on the couch with Butters on my life. Aside from a small twinge in my side and an ache in my legs, I am not in pain. More importantly, the terrible feeling of illness that's been with me for the past few days has lifted. I felt well enough to walk around the block just now. So long as I don't try to actually do anything, I feel okay.

I'm absurdly grateful. I was starting to think I wouldn't feel anything but completely weak and shaky from now until the end of chemo. So to think I might have the energy to cook a meal, walk the dog or attend a meeting seems very exciting. You take what you can get.

And here's the really great news. Four days from now, I get my final dose of chemo. Even if the two weeks following are as bad or worse than the last few cycles have been (which assumes I get yet another cold virus), the end is in sight. As the end of the cycle draws nearer and my cells start to heal, they will actually get a chance to do so. No toxic cocktail will flow into my veins as soon as I'm strong enough to tolerate it. Now that's a thought to celebrate.

I am glad, in retrospect, to have had chemo first. Surgery and radiation seem far less daunting now I've climbed this mountain. In fact, I'm not worried at all about mastectomy any more. I'm more worried about nausea from the anesthetic and pain from the operation than losing a breast. I honestly couldn't care less. Maybe I've already done my grieving, but I don't think that's it. They can take what they need to and good riddance.

Just give me my energy, some time free of pain, the chance to see my kids grow up. I wouldn't even care if my hair never grew back. I'd like the numbness and tingling in my fingers to go away. It does for most people, but if it doesn't, I can live with that, too. Just can't wait to get back to living!

Finally, thanks to all of you who took the time to say my writing matters. I have found myself at the center of a storm of love and compassion. People I knew in high school, college chums, colleagues, family, all taking time to throw some caring my way. It's breathtaking.

I have always believed that it is our compassion and altruism, our curiosity and our love of expressing ourselves that defines our greatness. We live in a world driven by the competitive and pleasure-seeking parts of our brain and the Mitt Romneys of the world have benefitted greatly. But we remain unsatisfied by the results. We want a better world than one driven by greed.

I find it takes courage to believe in people. In my work, I help my clients build companies that tap into our need to care, rather than treating people like cogs in a machine. Its not that incentives don't work, it's that they work in a very limited way and always have unintended consequences. We love to game systems that treat us like slot machines. In fact, we can't help it. But we can do better, and we truly want to.

Those of you rooting for me to get better aren't doing it for yourselves. Most of your lives barely touch mine and, though you might miss me, it's the idea of me that matters. We just want to keep everyone in the lifeboat. So, thank you for caring, not just because it touches me and gives me courage to know I would be missed, but because it gives me courage to be reminded that we crazy humans do care about each other. That gives me an even higher order of hope. The reminder that, when this is over, I have work to do, will keep me going when all else fails. Thank you for that.