I would never presuppose to imply that my problems are bigger than anyone else’s. Each person's challenge (eg: medical or financial, physical or psychological, family or friend) is the same size to them - huuuuge. Speaking purely for myself (there’s no one else here) it’s easy to get overwhelmed by an issue, but much like the now-famous Las Vegas Sphere, that which appears like a giant “ball” from the distance, is really just a collection of many little dots. Permit me to unpack my odd-servation.
Sometimes our problems can be managed better when we: look at them more closely, take them apart to their smallest component, and deal with them one element at a time. My diagnosis was a collection of related health concerns running unchecked in my body. The Onc team addressed my renal issues (overworked kidneys trying to deal with abnormally/dangerously high levels of proteins); focused on getting my cancer advancement under control (brought my myeloma cell levels down to near "0"); performed a stem cell transplant (to help the body produce healthy new blood cells by replenishing the blood-forming stem cells in the bone marrow); and then designed a maintenance program to keep all of that work at the optimum level (bringing me to my current "remission" status).
Cancer is a big thing. For some - much bigger than for others. Over time, in MY case, it has been managed down to a smaller and contained enemy. Much like the Sphere, the locus in this rudimentary analogy, that which appears to be a giant orb looming on the horizon is really just a series of little LED lights when you get up-close and look at it. Take our Earth for example, which seems so massive to us inhabitants (consider the Grand Canyon), but is really just a speck in space; as Astronaut Harrison Schmitt captured in 1972 - a big blue marble. Or as some have pot-stulated, we are like giants to the microscopic cells in our bodies, but maybe in some alternate universe our entire planet is just the cell structure inside a more gianter body of some sort (admittedly a sci-fi reality, and the product of 60's thinking).
In the end, how we look at things goes a long way toward how we can handle them. Certain facts remain the same; cancer is a heinous enemy that requires wholesale and wholehearted attention to combat. But trying to look at cancer, or any overwhelming life challenge, as a series of smaller elements that make up the whole, can allow us to manage it one at a time and not be swamped by the size and scope of something as substantial as the Sphere.
