Diagnosis: Afterparty

It’s finally scan week.

I’m only allowing delusional optimism and excessive gratitude into my world this week. I’ve always believed this kind of energy has no choice but to work in your favor. You don’t win at a casino by assuming you’ll lose. You don’t see beauty in the world if you’re only scanning for what could go wrong. And nothing ever seems to work out for the person who’s already decided it won’t.

I already know these scans are going to show some kind of improvement. But I’ve decided the universe is going to show me just how good it can get. Not hoping. I’ve already decided.

There’s a quote by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri that I love:
“Witches call it spells. Believers call it prayer. Spiritual people call it manifestation. Atheists call it the placebo effect. Scientists call it quantum physics. Everyone is arguing over its name. No one is denying its existence.”

Call it whatever you want; the transfer of energy is real. And while someone else can pray for you, or you can try to manifest something for yourself, it all starts in your own head. You have to be willing to believe the universe is conspiring in your favor and trust you’ll find the silver lining. You have to actively choose to see the magic all around you. And trust me, there’s magic hiding all around you- you just have to figure out how to notice it.

There are a lot of ways to cultivate that kind of energy and make the magic more noticable. And this week I’m treating it like a practice, not a personality trait.

There’s radical presence; staying in the right now instead of time-traveling into hypothetical futures. Noticing your nose isn’t stuffed, or a tiny bird being super cute just hopping along the sidewalk. Nothing groundbreaking, just noticing all the tiny miracles all around you. Keeping in mind that billions of years of stars exploding and rearranging themselves across the universe somehow led to this exact moment. The odds of you being on that sidewalk at the same time as that bird are so wildly low it’s almost mathematically impossible.

There’s evidence collection. I keep little lists in my phone: “things that worked out for me,” or “things that happened on my best day ever.” (hint: the highlight of that one wasn’t winning $500 at a Puerto Rican slot machine, it was getting rained on in a rainforest & drinking out of a coconut next to a rainbow).  It’s surprisingly hard to spiral when you have receipts.

There’s micro-joy hunting; really enjoying a meal, getting irrationally excited when a specific song comes on, smiling at a flower like it personally chose to show up infront of you. And all of this ties into selective attention. There is always going to be something wrong., but there is also always going to be something beautiful. I actively choose which one gets the mic.

And then there’s gratitude—arguably the most effective, and also the most annoying habit to get into until it works. Write down five things a day you’re thankful for; five seems like a lot daily, but it’s going to push you to find gratitude in small things. Give it a week. Suddenly, things to be grateful for start landing on you like you’re in a butterfly garden.

And finally, borrowed perspective. Actively reframing your life in a way that reminds you how much of it is a privilege. I saw a post on Instagram today that said: “Your normal day might be a cancer patient’s dream. Don’t take it for granted.”

And the thing is, I don’t. And I actually think about that constantly.

Because my day-to-day life has barely changed. I went into this expecting what everyone tells you to expect: extreme fatigue, severe nausea, days I couldn’t get out of bed, losing all my hair. And none of that has really happened. So many people in my position could only dream of life being this normal.

Every run. Every DJ set. Every grocery trip. Every hang with friends. Every time I drive myself to the oncology center, just to set up my laptop to work-from-chemo that day. Every meal I cook. There is someone with a diagnosis like mine who physically cannot do those things right now; whether it’s pain, harsher side effects, or just the mental weight of it all (which, to be fair, is a lot).

So it’s actually pretty hard to take any of this for granted. Every opportunity to move, every positive thought, every boring, mundane daily task; it all feels like a blessing.

I’ve been living in this reality for four months now, and every side effect has required such a minimal pivot that life just keeps going seamlessly. And I’m done waiting for the other shoe to drop.. At some point I had to consider the possibility that this isn’t the calm before something worse. This is just my life. And I’ve decided there is no other shoe.

The only future worth entertaining is the one where this all works out.
This week, I’m acting accordingly.