Planning Schmanning

I am an obsessive planner. I always have been. I love to make plans, even if they never quite pan out as intended. Training plans, meal plans, weight loss/gain plans, career plans, school plans – I am a schemer and a dreamer. Lists, diagrams and charts are addictive little things. And then came cancer.(Ka-boom.) So now, as a previously incessant planner of all things, I am actually finding it difficult to plan a single thing. 

The future is tenuous for everyone. We know that. Anyone could die in a car crash tonight. But cancer survivors (and their families) feel that reality a little more acutely. When your whole life explodes with absolutely zero warning, you wonder if (or when) it will happen again. I wonder if my husband will get sick, or if my kids will, or if someone else I love will have a catastrophic accident. I no longer feel immune to tragedy, as I once did (but don’t we all, to some degree, until it hits us?). I had a lot of plans, mostly related to my PhD. But I also had baby plans, and plans to move to BC. And on diagnosis day, that was all blown to bits. 

Now, with nearly a year of recovery behind me, I feel this silent expectation that I will go “back to work.” One year, after all, is what they say you need to recover. But what does it mean to be “recovered”? Who measures? And with what? I don’t know if I’ll ever finish my doctorate. On the flip side, I’ve been in graduate school for so long that it’s hard to envision an alternative life. For now I’m taking a break. I think about planning the next steps, planning my fieldwork, and I feel exhausted. Then doubts creep in – why bother planning when my plans never work out anyway? Also, maybe it’s pure craziness to return to the same high-pressure, type-A life that I was living before cancer. Maybe this is a do-over. Maybe I should just give up planning altogether. Let the universe decide. Although… the last time I told the universe to “bring it on,” I got leukemia. (I’m not joking – that actually happened.)

But can we live life without planning? People are always asking me what I’m going to do next. (“So, you seem to have conquered this whole cancer thing. What’s next on your agenda?”) I often just shrug, and I can tell people are dissatisfied with that answer. We are, after all, a goal-oriented society. We don’t generally approve of aimless wanderers. But can we find contentment being in the here and now and not worrying about next week, next month or next year? My last big plan was to survive this year of recovery and regain my health and strength. So far so good. Gold star for me. But what next? If I don’t plan, then how will I know what will happen? How will I know what to strive for? And how, pray tell, will I measure progress? 

But the reality is, I can plan all I want, and I still can’t control the outcome.

I’ve found that a common thing for people to say is: “Just trust that it will all work out.” I am guilty of saying this many times myself. But for a cancer survivor, it is very hard to trust. It’s hard to trust anything after getting blindsided by such a trauma. It’s hard not to see terrible things lurking behind every corner. But I survived, you say. I had a donor. Therefore I should trust that all things are possible. Yes. I should. But the survival was not without scars. Not without loss. Not without permanent damage. And I’m still so early in my recovery that it’s hard to trust everything will remain well. I’m trying.

On top of a mountain!

So I plan tentatively, and not very far ahead. But one thing I never do is plan to be sick. I am prepared for the possibility, but I don’t plan for it. Obviously you get your affairs in order (I’m not that irresponsible), but that doesn’t mean you plan to be sick, just like you don’t plan to be hit by a car or blown up by a bomb one day. It could happen. I just assume that it won’t. If it happens, we’ll deal with it just like we dealt with it the first time, maybe even a bit better. (I would definitely shave my head sooner!) But if I only have a small amount of time left, I don’t want to waste it feeling anxious and depressed over an illness that might never happen. We don’t live that way before we get cancer, (or at least I hope we don’t!) so why live that way after? 

So don’t ask me what I’m doing next. I have absolutely no idea. I’d rather just live in ignorant bliss for a while.