David Messick

I'm 52 years old. I have terminal Stage IV esophageal cancer. And my life has become something I never could have imagined. I have metastatic adenocarcinoma with signet-ring features. It's spread to my liver, lymph nodes, stomach and peritoneum. The surgery that was supposed to potentially save my life was aborted when they discovered it had already spread. I've been through chemotherapy. I've had a stent shoved down my esophagus just to help me swallow. I've lived with a feeding tube. I've had to rethink something most people never give a second thought to: eating. A cheeseburger. Pizza. A normal meal with my family. Things that used to be completely ordinary have become things I miss. Every meal is a calculation. Calories. Protein. What can I swallow? What will hurt? What will stay down? How much can my stomach tolerate? I deal with nausea, abdominal pain, strange sensations throughout my torso, swallowing difficulties, and the constant uncertainty of what is happening inside my body. I monitor blood markers. I read CT scans. I research clinical trials. I look at experimental treatments and scientific papers, trying to find something, anything, that might give me more time. And there's a particularly cruel part of terminal cancer that people don't always understand: You can look relatively healthy. You can walk every day. You can laugh, read, have conversations, research things, and make plans. Meanwhile, you know there's an incurable disease growing inside you. You become acutely aware that the future everyone else takes for granted is no longer guaranteed to you. I have a wife. I have children. I have things I still want to experience, conversations I still want to have, and memories I still want to make. I've even started leaving little handwritten messages around the house for my wife to find someday. Things I want her to know when I'm no longer here to tell her. I'm not writing this because I want anyone's pity. I'm writing it because terminal cancer is so much more than a diagnosis or a statistic. It's an entirely different existence. It's fighting for your life while simultaneously trying to figure out how to keep living it. I don't know how much time I have. Neither does anyone else. But I'm still here. Still walking. Still researching. Still looking for treatments. Still trying to eat. Still making plans. And I'm not done fighting. If you're healthy, don't take the ordinary things for granted. You have no idea how extraordinary they are until they become difficult or impossible.