THE JOURNEY SHIFTS

When the Future Suddenly Looks Different

Cancer did more than change my medical calendar.

It changed the way Sue and I looked at the future.

Before prostate cancer, we had plans.

Retirement plans.

Travel plans.

RV plans.

Places we wanted to see.

Things we had spent years saying we would do when life finally slowed down enough to let us do them.

Then cancer arrived.

And suddenly the future didn’t feel like something we could simply put on a calendar.

It felt conditional.

Dependent on the next appointment.

The next treatment.

The next blood test.

The next piece of information.

The journey had shifted.

We Had Been Planning a Different Kind of Journey

Long before Jonesing For The Journey became the name of a YouTube channel, a website, or anything connected to prostate cancer, Sue and I had been thinking about a different kind of journey.

We wanted more freedom.

More travel.

More time together.

An RV.

The open road.

The ability to wake up somewhere new simply because we wanted to see what was around the next bend.

After years of work, responsibilities, caregiving, setbacks, and putting other things first, that dream represented something important to us.

It wasn’t simply about owning an RV.

It represented time.

Choice.

Freedom.

And the belief that there was still a lot of life waiting for us.

Then the Calendar Filled With Different Things

Cancer has a way of taking over a calendar.

Appointments.

Blood work.

Imaging.

Procedures.

Surgery.

Follow-ups.

Treatment planning.

More appointments.

The calendar that once represented where we wanted to go began representing where we needed to be.

That is a very different feeling.

And it forced us to confront something I had never really thought about before:

What happens to the life you were planning when the plan changes?

I Started Living in 90-Day Chapters

Somewhere along the way, life began to feel divided into roughly 90-day chapters.

A blood test.

Then another.

Another PSA result.

Another opportunity for the direction of the journey to change.

It is difficult to explain what that does to the way you think about time.

Ninety days is long enough to make plans.

But short enough to wonder whether you should.

You catch yourself thinking:

What will the next test show?

Will the treatment still be working?

Will the next result change the plan?

Should we schedule that trip?

Should we wait?

Is it responsible to make plans when we don’t know what happens next?

Cancer may force me to think in 90-day chapters.

But I do not want to spend those chapters simply waiting for the next one.

Waiting Can Become Its Own Kind of Life

There is a lot of waiting in cancer.

Waiting for appointments.

Waiting for scans.

Waiting for pathology.

Waiting for blood work.

Waiting for someone to call.

Waiting for a number to appear in a patient portal.

Waiting to find out whether the plan is still the plan.

Some of that waiting is unavoidable.

But I began realizing there was a danger in allowing the waiting to become the main thing I was doing.

If I spent every day worrying about the next PSA test, then cancer would take far more than the days spent receiving treatment.

It would take the days between treatments too.

I wasn’t willing to hand over those days without a fight.

The Anxiety Doesn’t Wait Until Test Day

I wish I could say I simply forget about the next blood test until the day it happens.

I don’t.

As the date gets closer, it becomes more present in my mind.

There is a strange tension in knowing that something as ordinary as a vial of blood could potentially change the direction of your treatment.

You can feel fine.

You can be going about your day.

You can be making plans.

And somewhere in the back of your mind is the knowledge that another number is coming.

I don’t think pretending that anxiety does not exist is particularly useful.

For me, the challenge has been acknowledging it without giving it every day on the calendar.

Plans Feel Different After Cancer

Before cancer, planning a trip was mostly a matter of:

Where do we want to go?

When can we go?

What will it cost?

After cancer, there can be another layer.

Where will I be in treatment?

When is the next appointment?

How am I going to feel?

What happens if something changes?

Where is the nearest medical center?

Can we be flexible if we need to come home?

The dream didn’t necessarily disappear.

But the planning became different.

More flexible.

More thoughtful.

Less certain.

For a While, I Wondered Whether the Dream Was Over

That may be one of the hardest questions cancer brought into our lives.

Can we still do this?

Can we still travel?

Can we still buy the RV?

Can we still chase the retirement dream we had before all of this happened?

Or would trying to hold onto those plans mean refusing to accept reality?

I don’t think there is one answer to that question.

The answer may change as my treatment changes.

It may depend on how I feel.

It may depend on what my doctors tell us.

It may require changing the route.

But I have become increasingly convinced of something:

Changing the plan does not automatically mean giving up the dream.

The Route and the Destination Are Not the Same Thing

Maybe our original vision was too rigid.

Maybe we imagined retirement as one particular picture.

A particular timeline.

A particular RV.

A particular version of what freedom was supposed to look like.

Cancer challenged that picture.

But it also forced me to separate the route from the destination.

The destination was never really the RV.

It was time with Sue.

Experiences.

Freedom where we could find it.

Seeing things we had always wanted to see.

Making memories with the people we love.

Living intentionally instead of constantly waiting for someday.

If cancer changes the route, then maybe we change the route.

The destination can still matter.

Sue’s Journey Shifted Too

I am not the only person whose plans changed.

Sue had the same retirement dreams I did.

The same travel plans.

The same picture of what the next chapter of our lives might look like.

And when cancer changed my future, it changed hers too.

That is one of the realities of caregiving that deserves more attention.

The caregiver is not simply helping the patient navigate a changed life.

Their life changed too.

Their plans move around appointments.

Their hopes absorb uncertainty.

Their future gets rewritten alongside yours.

Cancer made me appreciate even more that this journey belongs to both of us, even though we experience it differently.

We Stopped Waiting for Life to Become Certain

One of the more difficult truths I have had to accept is that life was never as certain as I thought it was.

Cancer simply made that impossible to ignore.

Before diagnosis, we could talk ourselves into believing there would always be another year.

Another summer.

Another opportunity.

Another time to take the trip.

Another chance to do the thing we kept postponing.

Now I understand that certainty was never guaranteed.

So the question has changed.

Instead of:

When will life finally be certain enough to start living it?

I am learning to ask:

What can we still do with the life in front of us today?

This Is Not About Pretending Cancer Doesn’t Matter

I want to be careful here.

Saying that we still want to live does not mean pretending cancer is not serious.

It does not mean ignoring treatment.

It does not mean skipping appointments.

It does not mean forcing ourselves to travel when my body needs something else.

And it does not mean every day feels inspirational.

Some days cancer is heavy.

Some days treatment gets the priority.

Some days the responsible choice may be to cancel the plan.

The point is not that cancer should be ignored.

The point is that cancer does not deserve every part of the life around it.

What I Am Learning About the Space Between Tests

The space between tests is still my life.

That sounds obvious.

But I have had to remind myself of it.

The days between PSA tests count.

The days between oncology visits count.

The days between treatments count.

The ordinary Tuesday when Sue and I laugh about something stupid counts.

Dinner with family counts.

Time with the grandchildren counts.

Planning a trip counts.

Sitting outside and talking about where we might go someday counts.

Those days are not simply filler between medical events.

They are the journey.

Questions Cancer Made Me Ask About Life

Not every important question on this journey belongs in an exam room.

Some of them belong at the kitchen table.

These are some of the questions Sue and I have had to think about:

• What are we still waiting to do?
• Which plans still matter to us?
• Which parts of the old plan can change without losing what made the dream important?
• What can we reasonably do now instead of waiting for some perfect future?
• How do we make plans while still leaving room for treatment and uncertainty?
• What would we regret continuing to postpone?

Those questions have become part of our cancer journey too.

I Don’t Know Exactly What the Road Ahead Looks Like

I wish I could tell you I now have everything figured out.

I don’t.

I don’t know exactly what future tests will show.

I don’t know what treatment will look like years from now.

I don’t know whether every dream Sue and I had before cancer will happen exactly the way we imagined.

But I know I no longer want uncertainty to be the only thing making decisions for us.

We will listen to my doctors.

We will respect what my body is telling me.

We will change plans when we need to.

We will ask questions.

We will adjust the route.

And whenever we reasonably can, we will keep going.

What I Hope You Take From This Mile Marker

If cancer, illness, caregiving, loss, or some other unexpected turn has changed the future you had planned, I am not going to tell you to simply “stay positive.”

Sometimes the loss of the old plan deserves to be acknowledged.

Sometimes it deserves to be grieved.

But a changed plan is not necessarily the end of the journey.

Maybe the timeline changes.

Maybe the destination changes.

Maybe you travel differently.

Maybe what mattered about the dream becomes clearer than the dream itself.

Cancer changed the map for Sue and me.

We are still figuring out the route.

But we have not stopped looking forward.

And I don’t intend to spend every 90-day chapter simply waiting for someone else to tell me what the next chapter will be.

And So…The Adventure Continues.