Finding Grace for Yourself

This is a guest post by Sid Sadler. Sid was diagnosed with stage 2 kidney cancer in February of 2024. He is married to his wife of eight years, Rachel, they have two loving pups Ollie and Penny, and a new daughter named Parker. Follow him at @theunremarkablekidney on Instagram.

As I’m sitting here writing this, I can hear my 3-week-old baby swinging in our automatic Mamma-roo swing we have for her. To some that seems mundane and maybe a little cute, but for me and for myself one year ago it seems like a miracle.

As you’re reading this, I am a little before or a little past one year since I had my radical nephrectomy. Also, if you’re seeing this, I doubt I need to explain what that is. Parting ways with an organ (even though I have two of them) wasn’t in my plans for my early 30s, or at any age for that matter. However, I came face to face with a cancer diagnosis as many of you or your loved ones have. Don’t we all wish looking back we could give ourselves one big hug that first day, night, week, of our diagnosis?

I wish I could.

I wish I could tell him that you will meet people that you will now call lifelong friends. I wish I could tell him that those first days and weeks will feel like years, but they WILL pass. You will move forward. I wish I could encourage him to be more honest with select people in his life about the fear of death and dying at 32 years old. Tell him that cancer is so individualistic, and to not compare his experience with others. Let him know that with this disease a door will open to advocacy that a year ago seemed distant and unfamiliar.

I’d like to believe I have grown in all those previously mentioned aspects, but I haven’t and that’s okay. See, the one area that I have grown is giving myself grace. Grace to realize this isn’t normal. My wife and I had it planned out. She was starting her job as a nurse practitioner, then we soon would start a family. As you can guess cancer had another plan. We soon shifted from planning for a nursery to having conversations about advanced directives just in case. I mean, what does one truly do in that situation? If you find out, let me know!

I did however learn to give myself grace to process this monster of a weight that had been thrown on our shoulders. By the way…. There is no perfect way to do this. Giving myself space and grace could look different from you. The idea though, is the same.

Time passes though. You get through. Some faster than others, but that’s not here or there. What matters is you got to THIS point here, and you will continue to move forward. I can say without a doubt my cancer diagnosis will forever change how I view life, and I will likely have some form of PTSD when it comes to any medical setting. A great example of this was that even just going to my wife’s OB appointment leading up to our child’s birth would cause my heartrate would spike. Why? I knew the answer though. We all do.

Moving forward was something I truly thought was impossible the first weeks of my diagnosis, but here we are on a warmer-than-usual February evening, typing this out to I hope someone who truly needs to read it.

For me at least, this past year has seemingly slowed down and sped up at the same time. How is that even possible? I have to catch myself at times thinking about what could happen in the future and realize I can also think about what did happen, and where I have found myself now.

As I finish this thought and blog post for you, we will be going to feed our little one dinner in just a bit. That’s a sentence I truly thought I would never say a year ago today. I bet you have a sentence or two that you think might be too crazy to happen. I’m here to say it’s not, and if you find grace for yourself, you might just find that sentence happening in real life.