Two and a half years after the Stage 4 diagnosis, I confessed to my mother that the doctors had said I had two years to live, tops. I\u2019d kept this information to myself because if you say it, it\u2019s true. I told her this laughing, as if we were trading preposterous stories. \u201cWell, I guess you\u2019re going to have to hold your breath if you\u2019re going to make that deadline,\u201d\u009d she replied, in her slow Southern drawl when I gave my previously stated expiration date.<\/p>\n
I spent the next five years holding my breath, then did the same for another five. I enacted every New Year\u2019s resolution, past and future, all at once. Quit work that had grown stale and became a writer. Wrote a book. Went to India on assignment, fell in love with the language that was swirling around me, went back to live for a year and learn Hindi. Didn\u2019t realize the reason I\u2019d come to dislike that hyperbolically overachieving Lance Armstrong was that his behavior was too familiar. Take a nap, Lance! I\u2019d think to myself, though in truth I couldn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n
But if I was verging on radical levels of life consumption, I had a reason: No one had told me I wasn\u2019t going to die soon. About 12 years out, my doctor finally did.<\/p>\n