Despite having stage 4 cancer, the saying "You'll never find me dying" applies to me.

what Venice Beach looked like prior to December 2014. I was in a medical facility in Busan, South Korea when my oncologist used the hospital translator to inform me that my melanoma had spread to my breast and lung and that it had advanced to stage 4. He then briefly discusses my few treatment options before suggesting that the best thing for me to do is to return to New York. He appears to be thinking "dead man walking" or, in my case, "dead woman flying," based on the way he is staring at me. I have built the life of my dreams, and the last thing I'd like to do is leave it behind. However, he is right that I will have better options in New York. I have a great job educating at an institution of higher learning with four months of paid vacation, a suite flat overlooking the coast, I'm the culture and food editor of a local magazine, and I perform in a rock and roll band. I'll have more resources and need doctors who speak my native tongue because I need to understand what's happening and properly advocate for myself fully. That evening, I went home, and I Google, "am I going to die?" I discovered that advanced melanoma's average survival time varies between 6 and 12 months. The more I click, the more hopeless I feel because essentially everything on the web tells me that I'm going to die, which is why I desire to go residence if my end is near. She guarantees that if we ever reach the point where we've run out of alternatives, I'm a fantastic candidate for a brand-new immunotherapy combination employing a medicine that was FDA authorized authorized just three weeks following my diagnosis. When she tells me to "get my ducks in a row," I take time to process what she said before asking the crucial question: "So, Jenn, are you really going to die after four months of immunotherapy medication?" I am experiencing a full response, meaning that the medications have been successful, and my cancer is no longer present. I continue receiving immunotherapy treatments. I am lamenting my life in Korea but cannot continue because I keep waiting for another shoe to drop. However, the greater number of clean scans I have, the more I begin to come alive and resume normal activities. I join a Brooklyn film collective and began to swipe immediately on Tinder. When it comes to my final day of treatment, the other shoe will drop: if everything had gone according to plan, I would have been one-year cancer-free. My oncologist, Dr Wilson, informed me that I have four new tumours in my stomach and small intestine, which means my cancer has returned. It is bad when something terrible occurs, and we ask why me, meaning what did I do to ought this? But I believe this question is asked with the wrong intention and at the wrong time. When something terrible occurs in our lives, it's necessary to go using all of these processes. We have the mental procedure, the logistical process, and the emotional process. My own response to why I was writing is how I can use this terrible experience to teach others how to survive it. one of the issues I did throughout my final days in Korea had been to begin a blog to keep individuals informed so I would not have to answer dozens of individual conversations and so that I failed to have to have 20 distinct versions of the same dialogue every day and throughout those first few weeks in New York my blogs focused on the evidence and figures but the a while I spent who reside with cancer the greater I began to dig more deeply and also accomplish a wider audience endure New Year's Eve I obtained an email coming from a woman I failed to know her husband possessed been discovered with melanoma the prior day they had just utilizedutilized the last multiple hours poring through each admission of my blog in distinct rooms on distinctive computers and she was composing to tell me that following reading my phrases they felt less nervous and more ready and I cried responding to the why me does not have to indicate sharing through composing or art it can be taking part in a representation group or expressing your encounter in some compassionate of promote setting or it may just be the way you select to live your existence each day People frequently ask me how I stay so productive and optimistic in the face of my grim prognosis, and the truth is I rarely remain optimistic. Others see what I let them see, and I've become really good at putting on a brave face. I have a dear friend who lost her son and then very soon after her spouse of many years, and just being aware that she was able to get herself up off the floor and put one foot in place of the other showed me something essential when you're alive I've been in hospitals a lot, I need blood transfusions a lot, and you don't truly understand humiliation until you've thrown up and peed on a handsome guy nurse. I don't date because I would never drag another person into the muck of my illness, so no, I'm not always able to stay positive, yet I can stay in myself because I have to avoid cancer and grow someone else when I got cancer discovered out what I was composed of. If there's ever a moment to be true to myself when I obtained cancer, I discovered what I was created of and if there's ever a time to be true to I am among the initial cohort of advanced melanoma individuals for whom this illness might not be the end of the world because I was diagnosed throughout what I like to refer to as the Renaissance of cancer treatment. There may not be a cure for cancer, but there are many cures since each cancer is as unique as the individual who hosts it, and if the treatments that are currently available can work, then cancer may one day be cured. Quite literally, on this road, I get sick, and I pass away. Then, there is a middle road that is sort of an extension of the road I'm on now, where I can live somewhat normally but am reliant on constant medical intervention. Finally, there is a third road, which I refer to as the "why not me road," where I fully react to some therapy, and that response has longevity. On the first road, there isn't much I can do; sure, there are some logistics to I've already considered my mortality, but those other two roads stand for life regardless of how long it lasts, and that's what motivates me to get out of bed each morning, invest in relationships, and work towards my career goals because the future exists on those two roads. Therefore, I must live in the present in a way that turns that potential in subsequent years towards the same fulfilment and self-actualizations elf-actualization that we all aspire to ever since my recurrence a year as well as a half ago. Writing about cancer is the most fulfilling writing ever since it's the most honest publishing I've ever done; having stage 4 cancer has liberated me from the fear of judgement, not simply because hundreds of thousands of individuals read what I have to say. I cannot comprehend why if you have a certain talent or ability, it's not acceptable to acknowledge it. We inhabit a world in which it's perfectly normal to self-deprecate, but it's deemed in poor taste to self-cherish out loud. We fish for declaration by saying things like "Oh I'm not very good at that" when we are actually quite good at that. Living with cancer enables me to appreciate and express the unique qualities that make me unique, and it has increased my awareness of the gifts I have to share with the people I care about and the rest of the world. Although I don't fear dying, I do worry about the chasm my passing will create in the lives of people who depend on me. I worry that before I have a chance to properly speak, my words will be silenced. Instead of questioning why me, I now simply give an offering of myself to the best of my ability every day I am present. This sickness may take my life, yet you will never see me actually die.