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    Nine Lives Plus One
    Nine Lives Plus One
    Nine Lives Plus One
    Ebook183 pages1 hour

    Nine Lives Plus One

    By SD Webster

    ()

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    About this ebook

    An incredible story of surviving and living.Most people worry about getting older. But four-time cancer survivor Steve Webster worries about not getting older.
    Cancer has been a supporting character in Webster’s life since 1987. Since then, he has overcome addiction, undergone open heart surgery, slept months of his life away in multiple medically induced comas, and fathered two children when doctors said he’d have none.
    Nine Lives Plus One chronicles Webster’s life-long struggle to survive. Neither a woe-is-me story nor a flowery feel-good tale about surviving cancer, this is Webster’s gritty account of how this ugly disease and its equally-as-ugly treatment have ravaged his mind and body, leaving him with more scars than he can count.
    A testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.
    It is the story of hope, love , perseverance and redemption.
    Get lost and find inspiration in the story of Steve Webster’s life. The ultimate story of survival.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSD Webster
    Release dateJul 12, 2014
    ISBN9780993649608
    Nine Lives Plus One
    Author

    SD Webster

    Steve Webster has received cancer treatments from the east and west coasts of Canada, and at several locations in between. When the doctors in Atlantic Canada had run out of options, he secured a spot in a clinical trial at the National Institute of Health in Washington, USA, where he received the treatment that would save his life. One divorce. Two open heart surgeries. Two children when he’d been told he would have none. Steve Webster is an expert in survival.He holds an MBA in Marketing and has worked as a executive for some of the largest companies in Canada and is a frequent lecturer and consultant on leadership, marketing, and survival.A four-time cancer survivor, Steve is the author of Nine Lives (Plus One) and has co-authored dissertations on leadership, social media, and cause marketing.Steve lives in a house by the ocean in Prince Edward Island with his wife Sandra and their youngest child Sam.He enjoys chasing foxes out of his backyard and watching the tides come in and out because that means the outside world is still in order.

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      Book preview

      Nine Lives Plus One - SD Webster

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      This book has evolved over many years; sometimes written in desperation to have my experience captured so I could be part of the world’s memory (or at least memories of those in my small circle of the world). It started out as a book of poems or songs. I managed to work my way from verses and stanzas to paragraphs after awhile. The paragraphs became pages after almost seven years of a normal, peaceful life had an abrupt near ending. I then cobbled together nearly a hundred pages of stories leading from one tragedy and triumph to another.

      Writing a book was a safety net I had threatened to jump into all my life. The dream of that book—this book—was taken away by my health, so I had to cross the falls by finding my own balance.

      One night, I was at a family party, telling everyone about my book. I joked about being on Oprah with my tale of surviving almost everything. My aunt Marilyn suggested I call the book Nine Lives Plus One and that I get a ghostwriter to give me the proper perspective. In a sense, she called my bluff.

      Fate led me to Jaime Mann, my kindred spirit who had the inevitable job of entering my mind for brief visits to put more eloquence and structure into my written life, and Christine Gordon Manley, our editor, who paid the real price by trying to bring order to the pile of words.

      There are many people who, without their support, this book would not have been possible.

      My biological family—my blood family—who have always stood by me. Especially my mother, Debbie, who showed me where I got all of my special gifts and what courage really means.

      My brother Scot and his wife, Deborah, who took me into their lives and loved me unconditionally. I think of how far we have come in seventeen years, and it brings a smile to my face.

      Doug, Jackie, Ross, and Sandra. All my aunts, uncles, and cousins: I love you and I thank you for being part of my journey.

      John and Heather. My in-laws, who have flown more rescue missions to save Sandra, Sam, and I than I can count. Your grace has granted us grace.

      My survival depended on finding the right people at the right time with the right treatments. The ones who stand out to me most, because of their kindness and compassion for wretch-like me, are Dr. Wynham Wilson, Dr. Darrell White, Dr. George Carruthers, and Dr. Augustus Grant. I am also thankful to, and for, nurses Pia Nierman and Laura Cormier, along with all of their colleagues.

      I am grateful to have many friends and families over the years help me, and I am truly a better person because of all of you. You have given me hope and taught me many life lessons with your actions. You have been around me through all life’s ups and downs as I have been there for them.

      Bobby and Sue Lapierre. Bobby and I have known each other for the past fifteen years, and we’re like two peas in a pod . . . an old married couple (we joke that we are heterosexual life partners). Susan, whom I have known just as long, is loving, caring, and compassionate; she is everything Bobby needs (and I have borrowed from her when not around my own wife). My god, she is a good person. Both of our wives make up for the shit we cause.

      Neil Williams. The person I have known the longest on this earth besides my family. How fortunate I have been to have such a loyal friend who has always been loving, kind, and courageous since I first saw his face in the backyard.

      Kevin Webster. My brother in all senses of what that word means, we have been together for over 44 years—through thick and thin. I can’t think of a better man to sit in a foxhole with. Kevin, you are always in my heart brother, forever and ever.

      Mom and Dad (Don and Barb). I have been the prodigal son, and you have done everything parents could do for, and given everything parents could give to, a child. I was brought to angels by God and have been taught by the best on how to live and thrive in this world. My love for you is eternal.

      Sam and Kelsey. I wrote this book really for you. As a testimony to how hard I tried to stay on this earth to be with you. I look at you, touch you, and think how I would like to turn into particles and fly into you to make us together as one, but I guess that is the thing: We are as one and I will always be part of you. I am the proudest when I look at my two miracles.

      Sandra. My better half. Blessed is the day I met you. Never did I think that anyone would be able to capture my heart. You not only captured it, but you control it. You are my hero, my calmness, and my partner in every sense. The journey has been long, but we always had fun and took care of each other. I love you, always and forever.

      Secret Prayer

      Eternal it springs

      Around the corner it lingers

      Inside the very core of your being

      Interlocking everything

      Desperate to find it

      Hope to be able to see

      Desperate without it

      Hope comes back to me

      Hope is life’s sweetest song

      God, Hum a bit for me

      Help me sing along

      Hope is life’s sweetest song

      God, Hum a bit for me

      Help me sing along

      Hope is life’s sweetest song

      God, Hum a bit for me

      Help me sing along

      When someone in a white coat sits you down and tells you that you have Stage IV cancer, a lot happens in your head.

      You realize you have no more time for dreams.

      Time takes on new meaning.

      You imagine how you want your funeral to look.

      Inside your head, you die a thousand times.

      After awhile, you learn how to block it out. You take the darkness, put it in a box, and store it on a shelf somewhere in the back of your mind.

      When someone in a white coat sits you down and tells you that you have cancer after you thought you’d beaten it five years earlier, the same thoughts go through your head, except it also feels like you’re on the ice playing hockey and you dodge a big hit only to get smoked into the boards the second you turn around.

      It knocks the wind out of you.

      How can you be having this conversation with a doctor again?

      It wasn’t supposed to come back . . .

      Your life becomes part fiction that you believe and part non-fiction that you don’t reveal.

      This is the story of my battle with cancer. So far I’m winning, but it’s given me the ass kicking of a lifetime.

      This is not a story of self-pity. It’s the story of a warrior at constant battle.

      Cancer has gotten in more than a few good blows.

      Do I wish I could rewrite my history and leave out the whole fighting for my life on a daily basis bit? Of course I do. But I can’t.

      I’ll never be able to have a better past, but I am going to share the steps I took—the good ones and the bad ones—to try to have a better future, a future I thought I would never have.

      This isn’t a flowery feel-good tale about surviving cancer. This is my account of how this ugly disease and its equally-as-ugly treatment have ravaged my mind and body, leaving me with more scars than I can count.

      In 1987, I started fighting for my life. The details are foggy in some parts. Had I known back then what I was in for, I would have kept better notes. But life doesn’t work like that, does it?

      With the help of my parents, my brother, my friends, and my wife, I have pieced together this recollection.

      Since the time I was nineteen, cancer has reared its ugly head four times. I was an addict by the time I was twenty. My first wife and I separated shortly after bringing a beautiful baby girl into the world when I was twenty-five. I got sober when I was twenty-seven. I lost my best friend to gambling the year after.

      Fighting cancer has almost killed me. The chemo literally broke my heart. But I continue to fight. I’ve found love and life again. I even fathered another child, despite being told I never would. And I have never gone back to the bottle.

      This book does not take a familiar form, but then again, neither do I. A book about my life wouldn’t be right if it was conventional. I’ve decided to tell my story through a series of themes that have shaped my life between 1987 and now.

      I use Cancer as a character or a voice inside my head, as the bastard that is always there. Sometimes he (I think of him as a he with like a James Earl Jones-like voice) is whispering, sometimes screaming, but he is ever present.

      If you’re reading this to help you cope with your own cancer, I hope you take comfort in my story and that it encourages you to fight with everything you have because you can beat it.

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