Do you know how it feels?

To live a life numb from reality's sorrows.

To be conscious of your destructive surroundings and just not give a shit?

Do you know how it feels?

Ones that love me often refer to me as an asshole.  I think they use this word because they cannot process just what type of person I truly am.  If they could for a moment step into my soul, I believe they would be in for one eye opening journey.  They would wonder euphorically along the dark path that leads to my chamber of "feelings".  This chamber in normal people possess there deepest emotions.  It is a place where sorrow, hurt, pain, agony, and fear, all sit around a smoky card room gambling a person's life away.  They would walk up to the door of my chamber of sorrow and reach to grab a cold stainless steal handle.  It would not take much to swing open the frail contour of this door, for you see it has been slammed open more times, than I am able to count.  Each time the rugged door lost a little more of its structural composition and each time a little more "feelings" were able to escape until there were no more.  They would walk into a bottomless, drafty room where the stench of an intoxicating haze hangs in the air.  It would be in this moment that they would realize the life I have lived and the enormity of the feelings I have felt in my short life.  They would leave a little harden from their journey and emerge a different person.

They would stand before me gazing into my eyes and say, I'm sorry.  I am sorry not for calling you an asshole but because you cannot feel.  It must be awful, they'd say.  I would smile because I have been down this road before.  We would leave that moment a little closer and more aware of the world around us. 

This is my life, I am an asshole, but I have earned every letter...

With Love,

Preston Presnell
LifeLinkage.Com
"Welcome To a New Perspective"     

 Ring...

             Ring...

                          Ring...

                                        Hello?

Mr. Shock: "Can I speak to Ms. Undeserving?"

Ms. Undeserving: "This is she"

Mr. Shock: "We have determined the spots on your lung and liver to be sarcoma

(aka C a n c e r)

At a moment, her world stops the outside noise of the active city life deafens and shock sets in.

IT CANT BE

NOT AGAIN

Just 12 years ago, this same woman received her last round of chemo and submerged out of a dreary white hospital a Survivor.  Free to open her eyes to a bright new world, free to open her ears to the active city sounds and the fresh aroma of the local cuisines bellowing from the near by cook shacks.  The sun on her skin coupled with the joy in her heart revitalized the life in her veins.

IT WAS OVER

She lived day to day always aware of the battle she once fought.  Her eyes were for the first time open to the true joys of life and the realization that time no longer seemed to matter.  Joy, pride, strength, appreciation, determination, a life worth living, these were her newborn characteristics.  Therefore, as many of us in the fellowship of cancer survivors do we push it back, deep down into the pits of our souls never to be reminded of the day we were bombarded by three powerful words that would forever change our life. 

"You have cancer"

I have tried through various writings and attempts at copy write infringements to develop an explanation of how it truly feels to hear those words.  Through my countless search and reflections of my own bout with the monster, I have been unable to find a statement worth illustrating.  Sure I can say it feels like a punch to the stomach or a lose of a loved one or that it just plain sucks, but that would not begin to envelop the true physiological embodiment of hearing those words.  To have been told you have a disease which steals millions upon millions of lives without any discrimination of age, gender, race, or genealogy for that matter is down right, alone in a dark room after watching Friday the 13^th, terrifying.  In my own search for portraying the true feeling of first hearing those words process through your brain at the rate of an old school computer that you played Oregon Trail on in grade school, I have decided to reach down in my soul to describe a fraction of how it truly feels.

If you could for a moment imagine a gun, being held to your temple by a mass murderer and in three seconds he will 100% pull the trigger and end your life.  Now image instead of a surefire death from a mass murder, the gun was now in the hands of cancer.  Cancer ties a rope to a door of a frequented bathroom while the other end is delicately wrapped around the trigger of a gun pointed directly at you.  The kicker to cancer's plot is that cancer will leave a pair of scissors lying just out of reach.  It does this to make you struggle, work, gasp, and contemplate your survival.  While you sit there alone in the bathroom, contemplating ways of reaching the one thing that can save your life you break down.  Your head lowers, the world stops, and you ask yourself why.  Why me out of all the terrible people in this world.  Why me, when I have so much I want to see and do and offer the world I love and treasure.  For a moment you simply say fuck it, let the door open and end my constant worries that dig into the pits of my heart, stomach, and soul. Bring it, take me now!  Then it happens, those three seconds turn into four and the four into five and your head begins to lift.  You find the primordial survival fueled by the anger of things unfair and in a moment, you reach!  You struggle hard across the bathroom floor finding anything you can to drag the scissors closer.  You remind yourself of your past fights and the passions you are destined to pursue.  You're reminded of the ones who love you and the soldiers that are cheering you through.  As your fingers wrap around the stainless steal blades you hold them proud knowing you gave it your all.  With every emotion and time spent wondering the tears from your eyes clear to revile the rope snug between the two blades of steal and you clinch down!  As the sound of the fibers tear, one by one you begin to reflect on your time alone on that cold bathroom floor.  You remember how you felt when cancer set that vary trap in the highlight of your fragile life.  You recall the feel of a cool breeze on an autumn day, the taste of your favorite spirit coupled with a bite of your favorite food, you think back to the seconds before when giving up seemed inevitable, you remember how life use to be, who you use to be and most importantly, you remember your passion.  The last fiber of the rope snaps as the gun slams to the floor and a joyful river of tears flood down your chin.  Although drained from emotion and weak from the fight you stand fierce from your victory. 

You Stand a Survivor 

Here is to you my dear friend in battle.  I have made a connection with you that will last an eternity and I look up to the life you have lived and will continue to live.  You are my closest soldier in an unfair battle between an enemies we shall fight once more.  I cannot say that I understand what it means to have been told after so many years that the monster you worked so hard to beat has come back for more.  However, I can and will always say that we must fight.  Remember the past, remember sitting in that bathroom and remember how you were able to cut the rope.  I love you with a bond that we will always share and will add to your strength every step of the way.

Never forget that you are and will continue to be a

SURVIVOR

With much Love and Fight,

Preston Presnell
Founder, LifeLinkage.Com
"Welcome To a New Perspective"

I know it has been awhile since I have last posted my rambling thoughts about life, love, laughter, and our good buddy cancer but as the days shift forward and life takes turns, the urge to spill my brain arises.  This time it arose to address a topic that has lingered on my soul for some time now until it was jarred lose by a series of reminders that lead me to yet again conjure up some cancerosofical digest for your reading pleasure.

A month ago Tuesday I will have successfully been sober for exactly one Month.  By saying sober I am not, implying that prior to my self-fulfilling quest, I had dove into the bottle headfirst every single night, yet I mean that I could not remember at least two consecutive days that went by where I had not had a cocktail or two.  Before I continue, I feel it important to add some background, which will hopefully help to cut down on some of the natural foreshadowing and assumptions many of us are guilty of making. 

In a nutshell my social life, primarily the one consisting of drinking with others started "young" (in terms of age).  I attended the normal high school parties where the Smirnof Ice flowed with adolescent glee and after one or two I had felt it my obligation to announce "I'm Drunk!".  From high school I was quickly leveled up and shipped off to good Ol' Georgia Southern...Before you shake your head and quote the phrase, please let me do it for you..."Party School!"  Guilty as charged, no pun intended, I loved every moment I spent in that haven of a town.  And against all odds and many doubts, I pushed on to graduate on time and with a degree, but this being said I took with me the harsh four years of college partying.  From college I left back home to Atlanta and quickly molded into a corporate junky that spends his late hours obsessing about quotas, money, and how to get ahead.  I found myself graduating from the PBR's or the O so tasty Natural Lite and stepped up to the fine wines, and good wiskeys.  I watched as I blew $100-$200 from my Friday to Sunday free for alls that ended in shame, guilt, and stupidity when Wachovia.com mirrored a decreasing fund coupled with a forgotten time.  It was all in good fun and I was enjoying my newfound money, however life and for all purposes God demanded a new beginning. 

So the above leads me to today, exactly five days from fulfilling my quest of an Ethanol free month.  On this 25^th day, the word addiction has lingered on my tongue like an award winning chilly at Big Bob's Chili Cook-Off.  It has lead me evaluate the difference between a person affected by cancer and forced to truly ponder the thought of death vs. a person shaped by their otherwise "normal" childhood years.  Is it possible that addiction is not a characteristic of a cancer kid?  I have though about it a number of times, repeatedly, combing the years in search for something I have been addicted too and to be honest I just cannot recall.  Webster aside, addiction is a multidefined term by the general public.  (Aside from the numerous definitions I think one thing holds true, addiction in more often than not always accompanied by guilt, primarily a guilty pleasure.  This being said, could it be possible that I am immune to guilt and thus not an addictive person.  Maybe I am addicted to things but yet unable to find the guilt, either way this tangent is one better left for another blog.)  Never the less in lue of my rambling I stand true in pronouncing that I am not addicted to alcohol, but I needed the month as proof.  I think we all need a little self-proof in our lives to smooth out a world filled with doubts.  Now with a sigh of relief and a crashing of others doubts I have ruled out Alcohol as a possible addiction.  However, I am still left wondering just what has been or is to be my addiction? 

After some thought and repetitive actions I have came to the unsurprising but satisfying conclusions that I am addicted.  No really, I truly am.  My name is Preston and my addiction is c a n c e r and it has been for some time now.  My addiction leads me to obsess about how it has curved my life, its affect on others, what my life would have been without it and simply who am I.  My addiction sometimes hurts the ones I love the most by blocking my ability to be understanding.  My addiction kills humanly characteristics such as sympathy and empathy.  My addiction causes me to be forceful with life and to always demand more.  My addiction leaves me looking for the solution when I should be listening to the problem.  My addiction is who I am and my addiction is my guilty pleasure.  It is the only thing they can bring tears to my eyes and joy to my heart all at the same time.  It is the only thing that constantly reminds me of my past while driving me towards my future.  My addiction is guilty, my addiction is good, my addiction is bad, and my addiction is cancer.

To those of you reading who know and love me personally I would like to apologize on behalf of cancer for you see I just do not see it appropriate to apologize for me.  I never asked for this addiction and I never sought it out, but I have promised from the start to make the best of each day and to use my addiction as my Shepard. 

To those of you reading my familiar words I want you to know that it is ok.  It is ok that you are the way you are because of the hand life dealt.  It is ok to accept what you cannot change so long as you use it as your guide to a new beginning.  You have been given an ironic opportunity to view life as no one else has imagined and feel things no one else has ever felt.  Therefore, I ask that you be aware of your addiction and you let it be your Shepard to a life truly worth living.

Your Addicted Cancer Confidant,

Preston Presnell
Founder, LifeLinkage.Com
"Welcome To a New Perspective"
Preston@LifeLinkage.Com

 July 24^th 2008

I have one thing to say man...

Fight like hell and if the end comes during that fight then so be it but you fight like hell no matter what. I know the times are hard and the damn treatments, picking, probing and daunting thought of death is down right heavy on your soul but fight like hell brother. Dont ever accept the hand cancer has delt, you are not out of this fight yet brother and I dont even want you to think its come to that.

We are here for you. We want to know how the days are going and what you are feeling. Please come post at Lifelinkage.com for the people that care.

Fight Like Hell,

Preston

The above was a message I wrote to Tyler weeks before his passing and today I write to all of you in his remembrance and in my anger.

I write today a man hurt and pained by the theif of mens souls.  I sit watery eyed and raging red at the realization of a life cut short.  My heart putters slow with a remembrance beat of the times it once chased after me.  And in a moment I wish it were real...I wish it were tangible.  If it were a person I would steal its own life, if it were a place I would burn it to the ground, and if it were a thing I would crush it with such force the world would shake.  This is my hate at this moment!  The sad thing is my hate for cancer is so strong that it blinds my sorrow.  Fuck you cancer...no still not good enough, o how I wish you were tangable...I would distroy your being and rip from you all that you steal from your victoms...you damn theif!  W h y ...  Three letters I have repeatedly put together to form a word that haunts my days.  I've come to the conclusion that there is no answer.  You are and will always be an evil theif.  At times I've claimed you as my friend for strengthing my character and hardning my soul, but today I hate who you are.  

Tyler was a friend to us all.  His briliant brain spun whitty comments wildly which was quickly followed by laughter.  His aspirations of competing in the par olympics inspired us, even now as I type this very sentence the hairs on my arm rise with my impression of him.  His love for his family and friends will never be forgotten and he will go on to be a soldier of the lord as do all cancer survivors.  And no that was no typo, for you see everyone affected by cancer is fighting to survive and therefor are and will always be a survivor.  You will be remembered by the many that loved the young man you grew to be.  So here is to you my fellow soldier and to the fight you gave until the end.

"Research shows several instances when a patient's own immune system kicked in to oust a cancer even without help from sophisticated new technologies. Dr. Vijay Trisal, assistant professor of surgical oncology at City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif., recounted two such cases: One, a woman whose melanoma had spread to her lungs, brain and other parts of her body, was stung by a bee and subsequently recovered not only from the bee sting but also from the cancer. Two, a man with advanced melanoma who stepped into a poison ivy patch and experienced a similar recovery."

This passage from the full article found here ... http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=5197964&page=1  Discussed a recent success in which a melanoma patient was treated and cured using their very own T-Cells.  Blown away by this, I began to read deeper until I hit the passage above and then stopped to think for a moment.  I thought...Ya know it just goes to show you that invasive treatments like chemo, radiation and harsh surgeries are not the only means to kicking cancers ass.  Nope, there is something more out there; a powerful energy far beyond our knowledge that many often forget. 

In my opinion, the men in white coats can only do so much for a cancer patient...the rest is left up to that individual.  The "rest" that I speak of is that internal will and utter fight that drives your body to beat the disease.  I like to think of my bodies cells as individual soldiers of an army I like to call ME.  As lame as this may sound, hear me out.  What are army men with out a general to lead them?  What is a football team with out a captain or a head coach to pump them up before a big game?  Moreover, what is a cancer survivor without the ME factor giving his or her cell-soldiers the fuel to fight? 

My point is simple, never give up, and always remember when times are inevitably tough that there is something more.  Something far greater than the men in white coats that when triggered will astonish the minds of humanity.  A humanity that will one day know a survivor is a survivor because they fight with every cell in their body, period. 

I hope each of you have a wonderful weekend, laughing, loving, smiling, relaxing, drinking some cold ones, or just enjoying life.  Please feel free to comment, I always love to hear outlooks on cancer from a different mind.

Just Goes to Show You,

Preston Presnell
Founder, LifeLinkage.Com