2016: Or, how a fake death sentence made me rethink my life.
By: Heath W. Black
Tags: Life Lessons, Health, Inspiration

2016 has really sucked.

On January 1, I developed a cough. About half of the people in San Francisco had done the same, so I wasn’t too worried initially. But after a few days, it just felt different than a simple bout of bronchitis. I wasn’t quite sure why. Turns out I was right.

I went to the doctor three times in three weeks, eventually leading to a chest x-ray. I was supposed to get results within a few days, but got a call about 12 hours later. My doctor said, “Do you have a minute? We really need to talk.” My immediate reaction? Shit.

He informed me that there were several nodules on my right mid-lung. He said it “could be a wide range of things — Lung cancer, tuberculosis, an autoimmune disease, Lymphoma, a Fungal infection.” I responded, “or…nothing?” to which he also hesitantly replied, “possibly.”

Wide range there, huh? Assuring.

He urged me to immediately schedule blood work, TB tests, and a CT scan. I wouldn’t get initial results back for four or five days, at earliest, and even still they’d likely be inconclusive. After that, I’d need to get into a Pulmonologist that specializes in lung nodules and cancers.

After about Five Weeks of testing, here are the results:

I have five nodules on my lungs.

Four nodules are on my mid-lung area.

Those are all calcified, meaning they are old, dense scar-tissue

One nodule is on my upper lung area, it is not calcified; It is very small.

None of them are malignant.

They were likely caused by a bout of histoplasmosis I had at one point in my life. I probably thought that sickness was a bad case of bronchitis or the flu and was lucky that my body fought it on it’s own.

I will have to do CT scans yearly to monitor the growth of the non-calcified granuloma until it calcifies or becomes larger.

My cough was completely unrelated to this, but I would’ve never found these if it weren’t for the cough in the first place.

That’s great! I don’t have cancer or tuberculosis or any of these other things that scared the living hell out of me.

But, I did have a whole hell of a lot of time to take a look at the world.

A fake death sentence can really make you think about life.

I tried to stay positive, but I couldn’t help thinking about watching my dad die five years ago. I couldn’t get past him struggling to breath. That day when he woke up and you could see that the look in his eyes had changed — that he probably wasn’t with us mentally anymore. I was scared that would be me.

I thought about what Sallie would do if I got sick. She has enough on her plate with a three year old constantly yelling “MAMA!!!!.” I couldn’t bear putting her through that. I thought about how she’s always strong for me, and she’d be up for whatever is thrown at us. And I kept thinking about how I couldn’t be more fortunate to have her by my side no matter what the outcome.

I thought about how Jebediah wouldn’t understand. I thought about me not having a fully-funded college fund for him. I thought about missing him develop passions, or missing his soccer games. I though about how there’s so much room for me to become a better, more compassionate father. I thought about how he looks like me and that scares me because I was trouble incarnate.

I couldn’t help but go there.

I thought about the millions of people on this earth that went through the same situation as me but got much worse results. I thought about how we need to work fervently together to prevent that from happening to anybody. Technologists, scientists, journalists, capitalists, and even politicians working together to eradicate needless death of all kinds.

I thought about what I want in life. How for years I’ve had these plans and goals that I wanted to see come to fruition, but I might not have that opportunity. About all the places I want to see but keep waiting for a better time.

I thought about work. What do I want to do when I grow up? Where do I want to do it? What makes me happy and what makes me sad in an office? Am I where I belong?

I thought about what I want to read. Assuming I have 50 years left, and I read at my current pace of three books per month, I’d have 1800 more books in my life. I don’t want to waste any of those. They all need to help me become a better me somehow.

I thought about the people that have invested in me and how I need to do a better job of investing back in them.

These are just a few of the thoughts I had during that time, but most of all I thought about how I wished I’d thought about these things earlier — And how I don’t want to rely on a medical scare to process my purpose ever again.

And I thought about how you shouldn’t either.

Take some time today and ask these questions. Go home and kiss your special person, or apologize to the person you burned, or apply to the job you really want, or pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read. Just do it and stop saying tomorrow.

There’s a whole hell of a lot of life left to live and we shouldn’t wait until it’s (fake) over to live it.