It’s always there. Persistent. Biting. A thorn, quite literally, in my side. A strained muscle, I chant inside my mind. It’s ONLY a strain in one of the muscles sliding over my rib cage, it’s not the ribs themselves. But in spite of my wise-beyond-her-years rational mind, the fear still creeps up my spine until I wish I could wrap my fingers around a baseball bat and beat it into a mushy pulp. With 12 cancer survivors counting on me to make #Delhi2013 a reality, I don’t have time for this kind of fear.

But at night, when the house or apartment I am staying in has gone quiet, my mind drifts into a dark and twisty game of “what if”. What if cancer has returned? What if it is marching through my bones and threatening to cut my life and these big hairy audacious dreams short? Flashbacks of chemotherapy burst through the darkness and I curl into a ball, hoping if I keep myself wound tight, the fears will ricochet off of me and be gone by morning.

I know I am not alone with managing this giant fear. Most cancer survivors live with an octopus on our backs – never sure when the tentacles will slither around our limbs and threaten to paralyze us; never able to dismiss a strange ache or even a common cold. So, we make appointments with our doctors for follow-up tests and then we wait.

I suppose the upside is that this fear compels me to keep raising the bar and living my life with purpose and meaning. As I wrote in a post on the Volunteer Forever website:

Someone asked me recently why I felt so compelled to take 12 cancer survivors to India. “Why now?” she asked, “Why not get a real job, start making a salary again, and plan a trip for a year or two out?”

The best answer I can give you is that after living through cancer, many of us know that we have to chase our dreams NOW. We don’t know if the disease will return or spread further; so we seize opportunities and live the hell out of life.