Susan

I was diagnosed in August 2003 with sarcoma, which is a fairly rare cancer of the soft tissue and the bone. The cancer was in the quad muscles of my right leg. In 2003-04, I was treated with surgery, radiation and chemo and told that I had a good prognosis. But in October 2005, the cancer reappeared in the same place.

In Kingston, where I live, they said they'd have to amputate, but they referred me to Toronto to see if the doctors at Princess Margaret could save my leg. At Mt Sinai Hospital, in a complicated 13-hour operation, they removed the cancer, leaving the leg. Just six weeks later, however, they told me the cancer had spread. They removed a lot of tumours from my lungs shortly after.

Almost immediately, the cancer recurred in the lungs and they operated several more times. Then, in mid-October 2007, they discovered a tumour in a "tricky" place - near the heart, etc. - which they could not remove. They offered me palliative chemo to"stave off the symptoms". But the chemo worked "dramatically" and I'm still alive. I'm back at work.

My tool for living with this situation is meditation. I took a ten-day Vipassana course in March 2004 before my first chemo because I needed a tool to deal with the anger and resentment I had about being sick. I've practised meditation even since. I've done five more ten-day courses to learn to focus my mind. My mind is all I have to respond to this ongoing situation. I am happy to see the beginning of 2009, something I did not expect one year ago.

I'm grateful for this to Drs. Blackstein, Catton and Ferguson at the Sarcoma Clinic at Princess Margaret Hospital. I do not think about 2010. I don't look forward or back, and I live my life simply, ordinarily, for what I have at the moment.

Read more from Susan at Simplicity and Silence.