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Around this time last year, I was recovering from a 6-hour cancer surgery. The pain was chronic, but so too was my happiness that the surgery was successful. Apparently, when I was in the ICU directly after surgery, I kept waking up and asking my wife, Sadiqa, “How did it go?” 1/ 
I’d fall back asleep for five minutes only to wake up and ask the same question again and again. After the seventh time asking the same question, the anesthesia had worn off and it registered. 2/
My prognosis looked as bright as my daughter’s eyes who held my hands through the pain in the hospital and demanded to wear bandages when we got home in solidarity with Daddy. It all started looking up. 3/
I had started thinking in the hospital that when I regained my strength, I could finish the book I feared stage 4 cancer would not let me finish. (Yes, I was already preparing to write again through reading great prose in the ICU. Thank you @jesmimi for Salvage the Bones).
And a year later that book, #HowToBeAnAntiracist, is a bestseller and inspiring people. Incredible: the radical difference a year makes. 5/
It was too painful to share these pictures last year, and it is still painful. But I share them first and foremost for anyone in this cancer fight, for anyone nursing someone in this cancer fight, so they can know there is another side to the pain. 6/
So they can know there is joy in pain. So they can know pain can bring healing. So they can know there can be survival against all odds.
