Mind Over Cancer

Life is the best teacher & the lessons it teaches u are the best way to learn.

Shifting to Dubai from India has been very good for us as a family & personally.

But it has been nothing but a struggle on my professional front.

Just a Small Re-cap of my India life to the years of 2011 - 2016, the things I did at my work front was 

- book crazy orders and earn a good commission for my boss

- Travel to china frequently and meet different people, understand different cultures 

- Was always in the know- how, meeting customers, talking to them being busy and used to love my weekends off

- Taking wonderful short holidays with family and have super fun in night-outs with my wife and close friends 

Fast forward to the years of 2017-2022

- hardly any work satisfaction 

- Confidence at professional level in NEGATIVE, not even zero

- Meeting only my running friends or to network to find some work or purely to keep myself sane

- Constant fear of being fired and not having a job and that means no source of income to run my house and feed my family 

What has been good in the dubai move

- wife is totally independent and doing crazy work on the professional front 

- Rivaan is growing up to be an amazing kid exploring his passions in music & sports 

- Have managed to save more then what I would have saved being in india 

- Embracing triathlon as a sport and made some really close friends who are family to me now

To think of it, overall it has been a wonderful move as 2 lives are growing beautifully compared to 1. And I have no complaints about it as long as it’s always 2 v 1 

Physical fitness was the only thing that was in my control where I could just channelize all my negative thoughts, negative energy into something good. 

But then as all good things came to pause in my life or were short lived, it seems here also, it followed and I got detected with a mild form of cancer which stays with me for life long. 

The initial reports suggested it was either CLL or Lymphoma.
CLL is Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia where the Cancer is in the Blood and shall remain forever whereas in case of Lymphoma, the Cancer is in the Lymph nodes which can be attacked & Removed through aggressive Chemotherapy.

I wish it was lymphoma and not CLL at least then I could throw it out of my system in a year and live it as a survivor with constant care on food habits to keep me away from it.

But currently, my numbers are not that aggressive that it needs immediate treatment. So i am on something called a WAIT & WATCH Mode.

and this Wait & Watch thing is that it’s a double edge sword to me.

A part of me says let’s live the life in best manner b4 the shit hits me to start chemo

And the other part says, 

Let’s push the inevitable as much as possible.

But in that process I kind off have to do many things which I don’t like doing and spoiling my present which is a fuckup anyways.

So what’s the best thing to do??

A mix of both. M doing what I m asked to eat so that I don’t hurt any1s feeling,

I am living a life where I can survive and manage so 2 life’s thrive and progress instead of mine which can to downwards any point of time. In any case, what good it is anyways…

I am trying to do everything where 

I don’t hurt people who care about me

My mother, sister, wife, in-laws, friends, well wishers everyone.

Sometimes in the process, I just get lost on what I WANT TO DO?

I really don’t know what I want to do, because there r so many things that others want me to do.. hence, my entire motivation or thoughtlessness goes towards doing an ironman where I don’t have to think what i want to do, but only what I have to do as per plan.

Maybe that’s the way of living my life for the time being (or ever); who knows what life has in store for me but till something comes up, for me it’s like

1 swim stroke at a time at work where I suck like I suck at swim & managing work & swim both with a pull buoy 

1 pedal at a time to manage my family front, relationship front & wait for the tailwinds as currently it’s strong headwinds for past few years 

1 step at a time to manage my personal illness, find my personal goals, explore things at a time as currently it seems like a uphill elevation where walking seems the only option.

The Swim, bike & Run kept happening along with regular blood check ups, various CT Scans, PET Scans which became routine and life started seeming a bit normal without thinking much about it.
Until end of May when it again threw another curveball at me as my Dad got hospitalized and was on a ventilator for more then a week eventually passing away on 4th June 2023.

This roller coaster ride started somewhere in June 2022 following my own head and mind of what i wanted to do besides the others, i managed to cross the finish line of IRONMAN KAZAKHSTAN on 2nd July 2023.