Half Full or Half Empty?

I went back to Lankenau Hospital for my 4 week check up with Dr Marisa Weiss last week. What a difference these last weeks have made. My skin is so much better! I have no burning and, except for some discoloration and a slight redness at both scar sites, there is little change. Occasionally I will feel pangs or stabs of pain but they are sudden and temporary and do not linger, nor happen very often. She seemed pleased and doesn’t need to see me until August.

I have been thinking about the question of the glass being half full or half empty. How do you view it? or life? When I apply the analogy to my cancer situation, I say the glass is full because I only had stage one, it was caught early; I am lucky that I did not need chemo; after 6 months, I am cancer free. The glass is half empty because, who needed cancer in the first place; radiation treatment was no picnic; I have to take Arimidex for 5 years and it has significant side effects.

After quite a bit of thought I have come to realize that the real answer to the conundrum is that the glass is both empty and full at the same time. That’s it! Both is the right answer. It is both and you choose to focus on one or the other. At times you may focus on the negative or the positive, but my having a positive outlook helps me heal and move forward- so I look at the water, not the air and take a deep breath. It will help me in the long run in most, if not all, situations so I do it as much as I can.

What about you?