early stage. Cancer treatment techniques are constantly being developed and new therapies like immunology and genetic engineering are holding out the prospect of curing more cancers in the future.
Yet living with cancer remains a fearful, anxious time despite all the promise of medical advances. No matter how well informed you are about your cancer or all the therapies that might be used to treat it, you still feel some loss of control over your fate. You put your life in the hands of specialists and live in uncertainty, hopeful one day, gloomy the next.
Although living with uncertainty may seem uncomfortable, it does allow room for hope and positive thoughts. You may discover that life can be more meaningful. Little pleasures can become very important. You may even begin to "stop and smell the roses." Once any anger or bitterness about having cancer is put aside, you will find there is still tremendous room for enjoyment.
And, if you are like many other people faced with uncertainty, you may get your life in focus with more clarity than you have known before. Thinking about their own mortality , perhaps for the first time, many people decide to make plans for the future if the best happens or if the worst happens. In either case, the act of making plans wonderfully concentrates the mind. If you make that decision yourself, the act of planning will let you face the uncertain future with clarity, simplicity and the comforting knowledge that your affairs are in order and that as few things as possible are left undone.
