Sabacat

It is a beautiful Thanksgiving Day in Texas. Amid COVID mayhem we are suffering, Mother Nature decided to intervene and give us this gorgeous day to remind me about the important things in life.
I've been blessed in so many ways since my surprise lung cancer diagnosis in February 2004. I married the love of my life, walked my daughter down the aisle, experience the birth of my granddaughter, enjoyed glorious vacations, and perhaps most important found meaning and purpose for life after lung cancer. What is this meaning? 
I've learned that yesterday is irrelevant, tomorrow is unimportant, only today matters. I can truly have a new life with each new day. Life is finding joy, and then relishing the moment. When I find my little piece of joy, I celebrate. I stitch together joyful moments as memories. I write about them. When life gets difficult, I review my joyful record. I am uplifted and fulfilled.
Today I give thanks for the thousands of survivors on this Forum who teach me about life after lung cancer. The accumulated wisdom is an instruction manual for life. The most fundamental instruction: live in the day, find joy, and then celebrate. The montage shares a tiny fraction of joyful moments in nearly 17 years of life after lung cancer.
Stay the course.
Tom

I continue the tradition of anointing my toes with paint for each year I survive this horrid disease. Till year 14, I applied red paint; now it is Lungevity blue. The tradition of painting a toes was started by Dr. Phil Berman, a never smoker radiologist diagnosed with Stage IV, NSCLC. He started RedToeNail.com, an early online cancer survivor blog and painted 5 toes of life before lung cancer claimed him.  My tenure of life is a message of hope. If I can live, so can you.
Stay the course.