After family, the longest love of my life is ice cream. Sure, I like cycling, writing, theatre, and travel, but they haven’t been with me as long as ice cream. There are so many flavors, colors, and even textures, with bits of chocolate, fruit, caramel, combinations of that, and more. Then, the atmosphere of ice cream parlors make it even better, if that’s even possible.

The connection between ice cream and bad cancer may not be clear, so I’ll explain. I have to make deliberate efforts to avoid having ice cream too often, especially right now after writing about it so much. Lately, I’ve been looking for deliberate efforts to avoid thinking about living for 2-3 years, even though it should be longer. That thought can stay with me for far too long.

Like most people, I worry most when I’m tired, in the afternoon or when I wake up at night. Thoughts about a short life are more distracting than most. For long moments, they can spin out of control in my head, and nothing good comes of it, quite the opposite. I enjoy the days less, get less sleep at night, and that leads to enjoying the days less again. I’ve been looking for ways to get the thoughts under control, which is where ice cream comes in.

I always have to limit how much ice cream I enjoy because there are consequences, with weight and health. And now, I need to limit how much time I let myself think about a shorter life because the consequences are serious. Those consequences are how much time I spend enjoying life. Of course, I’ll still think about cancer when I need to, but giving it enough thought hasn’t been a problem. The problem has been thinking about it too much, at least more than I want to.

Ice cream is light-hearted example, but that’s important too. Playfulness and humor are critical during tough times, and all the other times.