Here's a question I have spent many moments pondering...
What would you do if your doctor told you that you had 6 months left to live?
Would you fall into a deep dark depression and die before the 6 months came up? I think many people do this. They are told they'll die, they accept it, and they never really recover from it.
Would you quit your job, sell everything, move to Hawaii?
Would you divorce your husband, move out of your house and live the life you always wanted? (I had a friend who did this).
Personally, I don't know what I'd do, myself. I make an effort to make every day count. My sponsor's tag-line is "Live Like You Mean It" so I suppose I'm kinda forced to think about it. However, faced with a decision like this, it's hard to say how'd I spend my last days, knowing I'm ultimately getting ready to die.
I do, however, know what Jane Tomlinson did. After she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and was told she had 6 months left to live, she continued her job (as a medical radiographer), and she went out and got herself a gym membership.
Then she did her first 10K run.
Then she ran her first Marathon.
Then she went on to do an Ironman - the full banana. Knowing what I know about what these races entail, these achievements are considerable. They would have been a lifetime's worth for many people, especially considering the pain she must have been dealing with.
Through the course of her treatment for cancer, she also developed chronic heart disease. She kept going.
Jane Tomlinson went on to ride the length of the UK - from John o' Groats all the way down to Land's End. She did another long-distance ride, "Rome to Home" - across Europe.
She did the London Marathon 3 times (once while she was still on Chemotherapy), and the New York Marathon.
She did a few half-iron Triathlons.
Then she rode her bike all the way across the US - 6781.8 km (that alone would have killed me).
She was a mother and a wife, she lived and she loved. She did all this, in order to raise money for Cancer Research. Even so, there were many in the breast cancer realm who wanted her to have a lower profile. She took a lot of criticism from others who believed she should have spent more time at home with her family. She was accused of faking it (the cancer, not the racing).
She was living her life because it made her happy, and she wasn't in it to be a role model or a poster child for cancer survival. She said, "I've never sought to make people think they have to go out and run marathons; it's simply my way of staying positive and to keep my life moving forward."
She was successful at what she set out to do - in the end, she raised about 3.5 million dollars. She received an MBE and a CBE from the Queen. She showed us that anything is possible.
She was dying of breast cancer, but she didn't stop living. She went on to live a full 7 years after her initial diagnosis. She died Monday, at age 42. She may have had cancer but by God she sure wasn't going to make it easy for cancer to kill her. She lived like every day was a gift - because for her, it was.
What would you do, if you only had 6 months left to live?
What are you waiting for?
Click here to read more by the Dread Pirate Rackham
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