Boy, Was I Wrong: Finding Purpose After a Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis

People talk about having a purpose in life, what their purpose is, what they were meant to do, and for most of my life I believed those were just throwaway lines. You know, much like, “Good talking to you,” or “Reach out, let’s connect soon,” and all of those other things that people say. I never really gave much thought to the idea that there was something specific that I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Boy, was I wrong.

When survival was the purpose

Cancer changed that, although certainly not right away. Honestly, at the beginning, right after my diagnosis, my purpose was pretty simple. I wanted to get to the next day. I was afraid. Once some of that fear wore off, the treatments and medications created so much fatigue that survival was still pretty much my purpose. Get through treatment, keep working when I could, take care of myself and my family, and keep moving forward.

Taking care of my family has probably been the closest thing I ever had to what I would call a purpose, and it still is. Being a good husband and father has always mattered tremendously to me. But as far as having some other calling, something I felt I was specifically supposed to do outside of that, I don’t know that I could ever honestly say I had one.

Until now.

Somebody else was lying awake tonight

This is my third go-around with cancer, and when I was diagnosed this time I started thinking quite a bit about what I could do for myself, for my family, and maybe for other people as well. I started remembering the sleepless nights during my first and second battles with cancer. I wasn’t really having those anymore, which was certainly a good thing, but I also realized I wasn’t accomplishing very much. Somewhere along the way I got motivated.

I thought about a book I had read that helped me through some of my darkest moments. Then I started thinking about my own fear, the nights when I couldn’t sleep, the worry during the day, and all of the things that run through your head after you’ve been told you have cancer. And then it hit me like a train that there were other people going through exactly the same thing.

Somebody else was lying awake tonight worried about a diagnosis. Somebody else was afraid of what was coming next. Somebody else was wondering how they were going to tell their family, how they were going to continue working, what the treatments were going to do to them, or maybe just wondering whether they were going to be okay.

That became the purpose of my books.

Something cancer didn’t get to dictate

I wrote two of them this year while dealing with my third bout with cancer, radiation treatments, and medications that can just knock the heck out of you. There were certainly days when I was tired and days when I didn’t feel much like doing anything, but I didn’t care. I felt like I had to do this, so I did.

It was labor-intensive and at times it was stressful, but it was also incredibly meaningful to me. For one thing, I thought maybe something I had experienced could help somebody else. Just as importantly, it gave me an opportunity to grab control of something in my own life. Cancer and cancer treatments dictate an awful lot of things. Writing was something they didn’t get to dictate. I could still think, still create, still work and still be productive, even if I had to do it differently than I had before.

So I wrote the books, and since then I’ve probably worked just as hard trying to figure out how to make people aware of them so they can actually read them. That has been an education all by itself.

I tell stories

I write a little differently than a lot of people in this space. I’m not going to call myself a self-help writer because I’m really not one. I tell stories. I think I tell them pretty well. I use humor because that’s how I have always dealt with life. I’m also pretty blunt, and I’m not very interested in pretending that difficult things aren’t difficult. Somewhere in those stories I usually find a lesson that I learned, sometimes years after the event actually happened, and I share that too.

My hope is pretty simple. Maybe somebody recognizes something they’re going through in one of my stories. Maybe it gives them something to hang on to for a while. And hopefully I can put a smile on their face at the same time.

Watch: those sleepless nights

Here is a short video clip that talks about those sleepless nights after my cancer diagnosis. If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, or you’re dealing with another serious challenge that keeps your mind running when everything around you is quiet, I think you’ll recognize some of it.

For most of my life I thought all that talk about finding your purpose was just something people said.

Boy, was I wrong.

— Tony V