I feel overextended sometimes. Usually it comes on me at the end of a long day of housework and writing and reading and thinking.

Sometimes it comes at the beginning of what I know will prove an 18 hour day that will encompass all of the above coupled with meetings and conference calls and long answers to multiple emails.

In those moments, I try to remind myself of why I am doing what I am doing and the progress accomplished so far. Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Someone I admire a great deal told me earlier tonight she admires my patience in dealing with all of this. But she sees only the public persona–as most people do. She does not see me sitting alone most nights trying to stick my mind back together so that I can get the next piece written or make sense out of a piece of research or plan the next event or complete the next step in this or that campaign.

There is a phrase Jane repeated over and over again in the hospital: “I’m OK. I have to keep moving forward.” It was her mantra.  She wanted all of us–the doctors, the nurses, the technicians and me–to know she was getting better. She was determined to will herself back to health.

I find myself repeating that phrase with the same cadence and the same intonation when things seem darkest. Sometimes all it does is remind me how frustrated and trapped I feel. Sometimes it pulls me back into the light. And sometimes it takes me back to that hospital room–and the most difficult hours of our life together.

We fought for her life every day. It was a battle we would fight together–and lose together–and win together. Ultimately, as one of her doctors said, she did beat the cancer in the only way she could: she died and took the cancer that ravaged her body and her mind with her.

We lost a warrior that day. I lost my best friend. But we sometimes have to lose a battle in war in order to win in the long run.

And we will win this war against NET–one lab at a time, one treatment at a time, one patient at a time, one day at a time.

We just have to keep moving forward every day.