The definition of perseverance is...steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.
Upon further review of my choice, I was dean on in picking my word.
This post is geared towards my personal life and not my professional life as an educator.
A not so quick backstory as to why I chose the word perseverance. In August 2017 my wife was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer and had her thyroid removed in September. The end of November comes along and she had to have a round of Radioactive Iodine Therapy to try to kill off any remaining thyroid tissue. In the mean time, my wife had to have her lungs biopsied because of a lung nodule that had grown. She had some complications with a collapsed lung and ended up changing doctors. After a CT with the new doc, they decided to do a lung wedge resection to take the nodule and send it to pathology. Those results came back positive for neuroendocrine cancer. Never heard of that before. Basically, it is what it sounds like. It is a cancer that attacks areas of the endocrine system and she had tumors develop in her lungs. She was then referred to a neuroendocrine oncologist who ran a specific type of PET scan to look for these tumors. She has multiple of these tumors in both lungs, classifying her as stage IV. My mother a week after my wife's surgery was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer.
Fast forward a few months. My mom is cancer free and beat breast cancer! My wife is currently battling her cancer. There is not a cure for her cancer. Since there are multiple tumors they cannot just remove a lobe of her lung. She get a monthly injection that helps with the side effects of the tumors and helps stunt the growth of the tumors. She is doing pretty well with the treatment. During this time, she was diagnosed with a type of congestive heart failure. While try to treat this, the cardiologist decided to do a heart cath (Friday 7/13). The doc comes out and drops another bomb in my lap. She has 75-95% blockages in her 3 main vessels of her heart. We are now waiting to have a consult with the open heart surgeons to see what the plan of action will be. There seems to be 3 options: 1. use multiple stents and use only stents 2. traditional open heart surgery (triple bypass) or 3. a hybrid approach (part open heart for the main vessel on the front and then stents for the other two). The past 2 days have been very difficult and being the weekend nothing gets accomplished in the hospital.
Thanks for letting me ramble about what all has happened. I have not written this for people to feel sorry for my wife and I, rather I wanted to illustrate why my #oneword for the year is spot on. Persevere. Success has not happened much, but I am remaining steadfast in regards to my wife's strength, positivity, and desire to beat anything.
My wife is the love of my life, my best friend, and the person who is always there for me no matter what comes my way. I am in awe of how she has battled these nasty diseases. One would have been enough for some, but she has had to take blow after blow, and she has only come out stronger. She totally amazes me. I just said all of what my wife was. She has become something even greater. She is MY HERO.
Now, how does this tie into my career as a counselor? I am going to begin my year with all of my 6-8th graders by choosing their #oneword for the school year. It can be a word for school or personal. I am then going to do a classroom lesson geared towards grit and perseverance. Using this example, will let the kids connect to me and see that everyone has something going on in their lives. We can let these issues take over our lives, or we can choose to stand up and, like my wife, fight with all our might to live life to the fullest and get what we want out of this life we live.
It is our choice. We can let the situation define us, or we can choose to define the situation! It is our choice! Choose to persevere and define your situation!
