Maggie Kudirka refuses to let cancer steal her passion.
I could rattle off an entire laundry list of reasons why I hate cancer. What it does to you, what it does to your family, what it does to your friends; I don’t think it’s a controversial opinion to hate cancer to its very concept. While it’s impossible to actually rank the worst aspects of cancer, I think one of the contenders is what it does to your future.
People don’t typically think that far ahead in their lives. That’s not a bad thing; the future is unfathomable, and spending every waking moment of your life trying to divine what’s coming next is a guaranteed recipe for a migraine. But when you’re diagnosed with cancer, reality seems to shift. Suddenly, your life has become definitively finite, everything you do matters so much more. You can’t spend your time freely or eat whatever you want; the specter of death looms over you at all times, plain for both you and your loved ones to see. That’s one of the most insidious things about cancer, that it’s slow. It’s a terror constantly lurching forward, and if you aren’t careful, it’ll consume your soul before it consumes your body.
Just thinking about this puts a lump in my throat. It’s why I’m thankful for people like Maggie Kudirka. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, instead of succumbing to despair, she threw herself into what she loves, dancing. Dancing didn’t cure her, but it did empower her, keep her going, and that is what got her through her cancer treatments. Her cancer could resurface later in life, but as long as she can dance, it doesn’t matter. Cancer may threaten to consume her body, but her soul is forever out of its reach.
