Dedicated to All Cancer Patients and Their Loving Supporters
July 13, 2018 I was diagnosed with aggressive Prostate Cancer. Metastatic. Stage IV.
I was told I had two years to live.
Since that day, people have called my return to health a miracle. I call it owning cancer. The truth is, you don't know how you'll react to a terminal prognosis until a doctor looks you in the eyes and says, "I'm sorry. You're situation is bad. You have two years to live." Following the initial shock, and given the short time frame, I realized the question I faced wasn't "Why me?." It had to be, "How me?."
I believe I’m still here because I chose to look at the prognosis as a challenge. And though I don’t know how long I’ll be here, neither does anyone else. What I do know is this: Love, traditional medicine, a renewed lifestyle which includes stress management (both negative and positive), daily meditation and extensive, thoughtful changes in diet, have made it possible for me to regain my health and remain here. Unexpectedly, a terminal prognosis came with a bonus: An awareness of mind I hadn't known before; an awareness that everything I was doing, I might be doing for the last time. A clear, calm focus brought poignancy and gratitude to everyday moments; from the magnificent to the most mundane and everything in between. While my latest scans -- October 2025 -- have come back negative, doctors continue to warn me it's likely I still have microscopic, extremely unpredictable and aggressive cancer cells living deep in my bones. I've come to think of those cells as a hibernating grizzly bear that I dare not wake. And so I continue to manage my cancer on a daily basis.
In the mean time, my hope is to alleviate other peoples' fears and maybe help them find solutions so they too may possibly own their cancer and perhaps extend their lives. While all cancers are different, I’ll share with you here what I’ve learned, with an emphasis on prostate cancer.
- Dennis Maneri
My use of a star field
... is inspired by the poet, David Whyte, who closes a poem with the words, "seeing at last the star you did not know you were following." He says the ancient metaphor of following a star is so true because when you're following a star, it disappears for half the day, missing in the daylight hours when you're overwhelmed by the priorities of the day, yet reappearing in the vulnerabilities of the night. I didn't know I would follow this star until someone told me I have cancer.