The Diagnosis
the doctor says the word and the room doesn't change.
that's the thing nobody tells you --- everything looks exactly the same. the fluorescent lights don't flicker. your phone doesn't buzz. the world just keeps going like it didn't hear.
colon cancer. stage III. DPD deficient --- which means the standard chemo cocktail could kill me faster than the tumor.
But I'm still at the keyboard. Still making albums at 3am. Still writing this book.
I'm unbound by cancer.
Mornings after deep lucid dreams were gentle unfurlings, bridges from boundless sleep to waking rhythm. But since diagnosis, that bridge became a chasm, spanned by a jolt shattering normalcy. I wake in precious seconds feeling whole---untethered, alive, world mine to shape without stage 4 cancer's shadow. Mind drifts, replaying dreams where I'm invincible, soaring through possibility-painted skies, body unscarred, spirit unbowed. For a heartbeat, everything feels right.
Then remembrance crashes like thunderclap, fierce, unforgiving. It drags me back into nightmare reality. Weight floods senses---cancer's insidious grip, uncertainty coiling thoughts. Inner monologue swarms: How did this become my story? The shift is brutal. Tears sting from the raw ache of re-entering a profoundly altered life.
Yet in that jolt, I learned to pause and reclaim power. Dreams became reminders of my core truth. Momentary normalcy is a glimpse of who I truly am. So I whisper: This too is part of the dream I can shape. Each morning forges me stronger.