Richie is My Name's video: I Have Cancer So F king What

“I Don’t Believe in Rainbows” ((Richard D. Olson)) © 2016. Performed by OLE. Taken from the CD “GOD & GOMORRAH” © 2019. All Rights Reserved. [Vocal: Rik / Arrangement & Piano: Anthony Joyce / Production: Lucky Lew [Recorded (Recorded November 2016)] I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2014. Being told you have cancer is not an easy thing. Your mind wanders to the inevitable pain and sorrow such a calamity could cause to one’s family and friends, not to mention the guilt you’d feel in having to tell loved ones you have cancer and that you might die. It was (for me) a body-slamming moment. But was my cancer diagnosis a correct one? Was there a mix-up in the lab? Was it another patient’s lymph node? No, it couldn’t be me. I was strong. I was healthy. I was fit. I was supposed to live forever, right? Instead of reeling from the drama and uncertainty a diagnosis of cancer could bring, the malignancy that invaded my cells and hijacked my DNA had, in fact, relit and reinvigorated my life. It had helped, among other things, to re-calibrate my life’s purpose and focus attention on people and things that mattered most. I learned to live “in the present” - to find peace in every second of the day; to taste and savor every morsel; to breathe in and hold every breath; to scan and commit to memory my loved ones' faces; to forgive those that hurt me, and conversely, ask forgiveness of those I hurt. I came to believe we live and die according to a time clock, programmed differently for each of us, of course, and that our lives are not infinite - that we are grounded and made one with the same elements and compounds strewn across the widest reaches of the universe, and that one day, when our lives are no more and our physical beings break down, decay and scatter, the elements and compounds left behind in our wake will rejoin the universe and be recycled ad finitum. Why worry about things I couldn't control or change? Why worry about a future that wasn't guaranteed? Why worry at all? Richard D. Olson, November 2016 Credits & acknowledgments: Anthony Joyce for his musical direction and arrangement; Lucky Lew for his production and input; computer graphics/video & picture content: random Google searches of topics and images (i.e., inspirational types, positivity, people battling adversity or high odds; fighting cancer with courage and grace) “I Don’t Believe in Rainbows” ((Richard D. Olson)) © 2016. Performed by OLE. Taken from the CD “GOD & GOMORRAH” © 2019. All Rights Reserved. [Vocal: Rik / Arrangement & Piano: Anthony Joyce / Production: Lucky Lew [Recorded (Recorded November 2016)]