Why I’m Writing about Living with Cancer

Because I’m not going gentle into any good night. Kicking and screaming all the way.

Appendix Cancer. Really?

I have a very rare and aggressive form of cancer: appendix cancer. (There are several variants, and yes, I have the rarest and most aggressive variant. Because, why not?)

Because it’s so rare and aggressive, most people don’t know they have the disease until they have body-wide metastases.

I am extremely lucky. My metastases are all confined to my abdomen. That meant I was a good candidate for chemo. Now, I am now a good candidate for surgery.

Regardless of my surgical outcome, I will always live with the specter of appendix cancer. It is relentless.

As am I.

1. Why this, why now

Too many cancer blogs are about dying of cancer. Yes, that will probably happen to me, too. But not now.

I have places to go. People to meet. Many, many books to write. And a family to see grow up.

2. Everyone’s got something. Attitude matters.

Let’s not compare bad things. Everyone’s got something, especially if you live long enough. I got a couple of bad things. (I wrote about that here: https://createadaptablelife.com/2026/05/how-can-we-use-whats-next-and-now-what-to-offer-new-options.html)

Eh. That’s life.

What is different is this: We can choose our attitude when it comes to our bad things. Is that easy? Absolutely not.

It requires resilience. And realistic optimism. Not to mention attention to details. (I’m terrible at details, so this is practice for me.) Oh, and don’t get me started on patience. I’m sure I need that too.

Attitude, by itself, is not sufficient, especially for big health problems. That’s why I believe in science, research, and experiments.

3. What you can expect

I expect to write here about once a week. I already write personal essays on Create an Adaptable Life. I started this section because I did not want to make that blog all about cancer.

I also write the Managing Product Development blog and Pragmatic Manager newsletter. I don’t want to hijack that writing with these personal essays.

While I expect to write once a week, I’m not committing to publishing on a specific day of the week. I have cancer! I spend way too much time managing my healthcare. Yes, you can expect a few posts about that, too.

Right now, I’m not charging anything for this Substack. I hope to set up a donation page, but that’s later.

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