Salon posters like to use obscure terms - at least, obscure to me.

What the hell is a bucket list? What's flava?

Having said that. . . Cary's response is unnecessarily long-(long, long, LONG)winded. Why not get to the point?

The point is, after any huge life-threatening experience, you come out the other side profoundly changed.

People whom you were sure were your best friends scatter and run for cover, unable to "handle" your situation ("I don't know what to say").

People you barely knew, or don't know at all, step up to the plate. You may experience the dearest friendships of your life.

Then they are over. The friends disappear, and your heart aches, but the truth is, you don't need them any more.

Your core beliefs will be turned upside-down; some (which you previously felt were absolutely essential) will fall apart altogether. There may be a void there for quite a long time. It's tempting to fill it with frantic activity.

The LW says her cancer will "probably" return. Did a doctor tell her that, or did she conclude it by herself? If the latter, she may be attempting to push herself forward with a severe time-limit.

In other words, she's saying to herself: Get all that pleasure and risk in, NOW!

It's understandable, as it looks to me as if she was pretty suffocated before. Not only that: her family liked her that way.

This is sort of like the widow, married 40 years, who starts dating again, and looks and feels better than she ever has in her life. Her children are usually totally freaked out by this, think it's embarrassing and inappropriate, and do everything they can to sabotage it. Get Mom back to the way she used to be (a good little housewife, always putting her own needs last)! She is of far more use to them that way, and besides, they can always predict and even control her behaviour.

I'm OK with the LW's bucket list, whatever the hell that is, but I'm not sure she can do it all, or even needs to do it all. Just thinking about it is liberating. As for the tattoo, I told myself I'd get one when I published my first novel. The time came, and - I bought myself an amber pendant. Why put yourself through more pain when you've clearly had enough?

I want to respond to “I am tired of having to confront my loved ones' sarcasm and disapproval on a daily basis. If my cancer comes back (it likely will), I will regret not having made changes in my life. I feel like time is running out for me.” Cancer is much trickier than that – it would be easier if it were more predictable. I had invasive ductile breast cancer, which I was told has the second worst prognosis of the breast cancers. Before my radical mastectomy, the surgeon said “It doesn’t look good.” I had a history of major tumors – four surgeries before this one. Yet here I am, thirteen years later with a clean tumor test last month. So it isn’t possible to say what is likely. Making changes in your life based on a certainty that it will be short could put you in a very uncomfortable place if you live long.

Cancer for survivors is like a Damocles sword hanging over our heads, we never know when it will drop. There is a strong pull to do things that conceal that from ourselves. Yes, we need to value and treasure every precious moment we have and give ourselves as much joy and fulfillment as we can. It’s just a good idea to take things slowly, easily, don’t be too sure that you have to rush. And think about doing things to repair yourself as a person.

My surgeon put me in touch with an energy healer and this led me to study energy medicine and I feel I have benefitted greatly from it. I take lessons in the Alexander Technique, which releases tension and brings the body into balance. Your choices might be different, but before plastic surgery and tattoos, why don’t you try some form of body work that puts you in touch with your sense of yourself as a whole person?

Get a sense of yourself from the inside. There are internal as well as external adventures and your experience of your mind and body can be very challenging to understand.

As for your loved ones’ sarcasm and disapproval, that isn’t so good for you. Negative energy is something I try not to get too much of. I think sarcasm is mostly mean and ugly and you don’t need it. I used to enjoy sarcasm until I realized that it was me having fun being smart and witty by exercising the power to hurt someone. It comes from a kind of closed place in the person doing it.

Since my cancer experience, I have come to value kindness above almost everything. A neighbor of mine who has survived cancer for nine years now has gone to Africa, India, and other places, working with Habitat for Humanity.

Another thing that helped me has been psychotherapy with a psychiatrist who specializes in patients who have gone through severe illnesses.

I realize now that I am very grateful to your letter for making me sit down and think these things through, looking back over the past thirteen years. I hope that you and I both have many years of reasonably good health ahead of us.

Having had a couple (at least, so far) of Near Death (tm) experiences so far (one via doctor's office medical diagnosis, one via Jeep coming through the windshield of my car at 50mph), I feel eminently qualified to say -- you might as well make the best life you can while you're here, who knows how long that will be?

I wish the LW all the best, but I wonder if she is currently in the "wow I'm alive and I need to change EVERY SINGLE THING IN MY LIFE!" mode that, while tremendously exhilarating and more than a bit of fun, doesn't necessarily continue on (the feeling, that is), for years on end. That is, much of life is really just putting in the day-to-day stuff, so making the day-to-day stuff happen in the most positive way is quite a feat in itself (laundry, cooking, the occasional bath). Plus a sense of humor helps.

I noticed that the LW starts by saying she's an adventurous person, has a successful career, went to a good school, your basic semi-cheerful resume ... but now that she's recovering from cancer, the job sucks, she wants to go back to school, lose the loser friends, stop being Miss Nicey Nice ... I'm sensing a bit of a "disconnect" there between how she sees/saw her life before, and what she'd like to do with her remaining time on this mortal coil. So, question is, beyond the joy of wanting to live each moment to the fullest from now on -- *is* her current life in need of major overhaul, or is this a bit of a rebound feeling that may change just a bit as days go by?

In either case, I'm all for travel and enjoying interacting with positive people, so I highly recommend going for that, no matter how long we have to live. As for tattoos and plastic surgery ... if you've got a lot of free time and money available for those things, I'd probably lean towards spending it on "non-body" things/experiences, for the time being ... you've discovered that your physical body is rather ephemeral, no use putting a lot of mechanical modifications into something that's probably not all that solid to begin with. No offense, I mean be gentle with your machinery and maybe spend the $$$ on better foods and some good beer, you can get the same results through alcohol as with tattoos and plastic surgery.

Your husband is the wild card -- I dunno what your relationship is like, you seem to be okay with each other, but then, you also presented your career, schooling, and life in general as "pretty good/pretty bad," so maybe your feelings towards him change regularly too. Anyway, not much I can help you with there except to say, be fair and considerate with him, whatever your choices. He's dying too, by the way.

Last but not least, welcome to a great and wonderful world, where you realize how little most things really matter, and how mostly little things matter the most.

Now, stop reading this crap and go play!