How I Truly Learned to Live With Stage 4 Colon Cancer

If you have been diagnosed with cancer, you know just how much it turns your whole life upside down. Heck, it turns the lives of everyone who loves you upside down and spins you around in a circle until you are so dizzy you just want to vomit. Some of us do vomit, but once you come up for air, or at least when I did, I felt like I needed to learn how to live again.

How do you live when you are constantly trying to figure out how not to die?

I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in early February 2023. I was 37 years old, and cancer was the very last thing on my mind. What even is an oncologist? The word wasn't a part of my vocabulary.

That year, it seemed like all the spring holidays came early. Graciously, my mom hosted the family on these days. At each one, I would show up with a sad smile and try to get through the day without crying. On those occasions, in the back of my mind, and I'm sure everyone else's in attendance, was the same persistent question: Would this be my last fill-in-the-blank?My last Easter, my last Mother’s Day, my last birthday… Always pervasively circulating in my mind would be this thought: Will I be around for this next year? And in typical Eeyore fashion (Yes, that Eeyore, the sad donkey from Winnie the Pooh), I would internalize the “probably going to rain” mentality and just assume I would not.

We took hundreds of pictures where I dutifully smiled. My kids were rotated through the line so each could have a picture with Mom. I smiled with my sister, mom, dad, husband and anyone else fortunate enough to be around. Every time we would get together, we would take what felt like 100s of pictures.

By the time Thanksgiving and Christmas came around, I wasn't so grim. It helped that my tumors were responsive to chemo and I was scheduled for surgery to hopefully remove what remained.

Yes, these hopeful circumstances related to my disease helped my overall attitude, but what I found helped the most was that during that dark year, I had surrounded myself with other survivors. These were people who inspired me. They were living with metastatic cancer, yet still doing all the things. They were running marathons, hiking mountains, taking once-in-a-lifetime trips, getting married, learning new skills and embracing old skills. They had found a way to live. Not just live the day-to-day grind like so many of us have for years, but authentically live in the face of dim prognoses and unimaginable darkness. They inspire, advocate and wake up every day embracing life.

In the face of cancer, those who come before me have shown me how to live each day knowing it could very well be their last. It's cliche, but it's true.

None of us are given a timeline or know when we will no longer be a citizen of this world.

Do I still think about dying? Every. single. day. But I also live in the present now and embrace the time given to me.

To all the survivors out there living life to the fullest, thank you for showing me the light, how to genuinely smile again and how to live life while actively trying not to die.

This story was written and submitted by Lauryn Cooney. The article reflects the views of Cooney and not of CURE®. This is also not supposed to be intended as medical advice.

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