The Choice

I can't remember when last I read a whole book in as short a time as I did with The Choice. I started late yesterday and read a bit and then again after the kids went to bed. I couldn't put it down last night and at one point realised that it was past midnight so time to put it down and I finished it today. Before I found it now recently, I could remember snippets from when I first read it so many years ago. I must say that now that I have read it again, I found it a very well written book. After all, I could hardly put it down. In parts I could relate quite well and certainly some of the medicines mentioned, I was familiar with. I'm really glad I found the book, even though this particular book is a little sad.

There was one part of the book that stood out "...It was a sight she had witnessed many times in her young life. Tonight it seemed quite different. Nothing else had changed, only herself. Yet nothing was the same anymore. Not eating, not sleeping, not going to school, not talking to her friends on the phone for hours one end. Once you've heard that word cancer, that devastating word, nothing can ever be the same again."

And that is so true. Life can never be the way it was before cancer. And even though we have slotted into our new after-chemo routine, things are different to the way they were before. We have different priorities, different goals, perhaps a little less energy and certainly we have come to know the people who would be there for us regardless of the situation and those who would rather choose to fade away in the background, that when we came to the fork in our road, they chose the other road away from the road we had to walk. But we have no regrets. We don't regret that leukemia happened. The whole experience made us stronger. We learned a lot from it. We have no anger or even sadness. I have always refused to let our lives be driven by sadness, because we owed it to ourselves to look for positives and to find happiness despite the cancer, that when we looked back we could remember the happier days also. I look at Bianca and it makes me feel so proud that she is able to live life despite all the challenges she faced. I feel so proud that she does not feel sorry for herself, that she lives her life to the fullest, that she can smile and laugh and dream. She makes us so extremely proud!