The Motivation Behind My Embarrassing Secret (Santa Barbara)

I am a grown woman, thirty- (covers my mouth with my hand to muffle the rest of my age).

I travel a lot for work, and lately when I am not traveling, and honestly, even when I am, I have been staying with my parents.

Thirty-something, professional, living “at home.”

The spirit of this came to a head this weekend with a lot of animosity between my parents and me.

Basically, why am I “mooching” off my parents… forget about how undignified and how embarrassed I am by living with my parents. (Not to mention the fact that I have to run to a storage unit to grab stuff at least once a week because most of my stuff is there so as not to invade their space.)

I make a good living. Why am I living at home?

One word: Cancer.

It is not that I have cancer.

It is not that my last bout with cancer left me in debt.

It is that the next time I have cancer, which is not a statically negligible likelihood, I estimate I will need to have $70,000 in the bank to be comfortable for treatment.

That $70,000 is the cost of treatment, the cost living and the cost of comfort (nice scarfs for my bald head) for approximately one year.

I have always been a penny-pincher. But this has been monumentally exacerbated by having had cancer.  I had frugally saved for years, and it afforded me the luxury of living, without worry, off savings for 2011’s chemotherapy and 2012’s multiple surgeries.  It was a luxury and a comfort, but it did empty my coffers. So now, I am saving up to have cancer, again, because if there is one thing healthy me, can do for sick me, it is afford myself the comfort of not having to work while sick or even worry while being sick.

And you know what, if in five years, I don’t need to use it, well gosh it will be an awesome fund for an extended South Pacific vacation.

In the meantime, as I weigh the merits of every nickel I choose to spend, I hide this reality, both the motivation and the day-to-day choices, from friends and family alike. I know my family would say “we will take care of you” and my friends would say “you can’t constantly be planning on having cancer.”

All cancer patients make some dramatic change in their lives in an attempt for control. Usually this manifests in eating choices, next most common is an exercise lifestyle, a little less frequently it manifests in work changes, rarely but sometimes in relationship choices, often ending relationships.

I admit I am doing it a little differently. I am not trying to prevent cancer by living only on blueberries and pomegranates. I am just trying to prepare to be comfortable if it should happen again…. A very boy-scout approach if I do say so myself (but I do understand those who see it as twisted if not outright perverse).

Please don’t judge me for my choices, as post-traumatic stress induced as they are.

Just allow me to cope the way I need to.

Stupid: Cancer.

Cool: Being healthy enough to be making headway in my rainy-day (aka cancer) fund.