“You have many months to live,” my palliative care doctor told me recently. She must’ve thought that was more polite than saying “less than a year.” I have finally advanced to the stage predicted by my oncologist, who said seven years ago, “I’m thinking years, not months.”
I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at age 53 and expected to live for three years. Practical to a fault, I bypassed the first four stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining and depression — and embraced acceptance. Ten days after the grim diagnosis, I wrote in my journal:
My situation isn’t so bad because:
