Perspective

It seems that wherever I go these days somebody comments about how good I look, referring to my health. Indeed my eyes don’t stream tears anymore, my fingernails have grown back, I’ve gained some weight and I have some hair, even though it is Bozo the Clown hair. And I feel very good. Based on how I look and how I feel you’d never know I’m walking around with a terminal disease. Sometimes I forget myself. And this is good because I want to be able to live life as normally as possible. But then something comes up that I have to deal with like a treatment or doctor appointment and I’m reminded of the reality. Now that I have been dealing with this illness as long as I have, about twenty months, I have seen many patients pass on from it. Many of them have lasted a much shorter period of time than I. That’s discouraging. But then I see patients like Mark Richardson and Dick Dickerman who were both stage 4, not candidates for surgery, and both have passed the five year mark. That’s encouraging. But then I read about someone like Les Coleman who has made it to seven years but is now near the end of his battle. Sometimes Terry and I disagree about how we should handle things. She tends to not want to make plans too far into the future because I might not be able to participate because of a treatment or q reaction to a treatment. I tend to think we should go for it. Other times I’ll talk about something like estate planning with a short time frame in mind and she’ll tell me I could outlive her and everyone else. I try to keep things in balance, in perspective. I think the perfect balance is to live life as fully as possible because I probably don’t have much time left. But that doesn’t stop me from fighting as hard as I can and maintaining hope that miracles can happen. I guess I try to be realistically positive or positively realistic. It is a tough balancing act. Last Monday I had a CT scan ordered by the SIRT team but I must confess I don’t know why. I don’t know if they were looking for tumors, checking out the work they did or mapping out the next procedure. Frankly I don’t care. I’ll find out soon enough. I saw Dr. George the Chemo Kaiser yesterday. Her office called and said she would like to check me out because she hasn’t seen me for a while. That made me suspicious and sure enough when I walked into her office three masked men jumped me a tried to hook me up to the chemo pump. I was able to fight them off and I told Dr. George that if she wanted to see me she’d have to lay off the chemo for now. She reluctantly agreed and just did a routine examination. Everything checked out but that really doesn’t mean much except that my heart is still beating and my lungs are still taking in oxygen. Dr. George did mark her calendar for exactly two weeks after the next SIR treatment which is when I can start chemo again. I suspect I’ll wake up that day to find her on my doorstep with tubes and needles in hand. Next week is the final SIR treatment. I can hardly wait. Carry on. ---------------------------------------------------------