Pure (Cancer) Reality

Last week, a round of chemo and this week, an hour of Erbitux. The tumors on my chest under some better control, perhaps smaller--the nodules under my arms sot so prominent.  These are signs of progress, slow perhaps, but progress.

The problem, I'm finding out, is that this progress comes against a mountain of cancer spreading throughout my system, hitchhiking in the lymph system to points unknown. The disease is progressing even as I am, and my prognosis is guarded.

This first came up a couple of weeks ago when I had a consultation with an outside ENT surgeon, looking into a wound that has opened on my neck--and in his estimation, surgery was a waste of time as I had a matter of months to live. Months I thought? Months?

Well, it seems that's not a wholly unsubstantiated prognosis--albeit one that doesn't take into account my progress against its progress, and can't rationalize my state of mind and determination versus the raw destructive power of cancer. This prognosis, depressing as it seems at first to hear, is just a guess in a sea of half-spawned data.

It can't be ignored, though--and to me, an optimism that I have that is uninformed is as stupid as defeating oneself before the race is started. What this prognosis means to me is that I have to cross t's and dot i's and be more aggressive. It means I have to guard my mental state to be strong against the idea that this isn't worth fighting any longer, and that is harder to do than you might imagine.

Back in March, I woke up from surgery certain that they'd gotten the cancer, that I would recover fully, and within months, I'd be back at my favorite burger bar. Months later, I see that growing more distant, but not impossible; it would have to be the edge of an island my raft would aim to achieve, a place I need to be ready to grasp, but not anytime soon.

My deal with Scott when we first heard the shortened timeline was not to share it--and mostly, we haven't--my only experiment in doing so seeming to depress the listener to a degree that alarmed me and brought a dinner at our apartment to a screeching end.

Prognosis is guesswork, and can't possibly accept the variables of me, how well treatment goes, whether I'm chosen for a Phase I trial (this is a possibility), what I make of the news. But prognosis does tell me how difficult it is , how high the incline I'm facing (high), and how much miracle to practicality I need in the mix (significant).

As a practical person, I want to be ready to live and ready to die at the same moment--I believe that one can't be too far away from the other. I don't know what happens when we die, though I suspect there's another dimension; I suspect when we live past other's expectations of our death, that's rather similar.

My own expectations and my vision shows me as an old guy, hitting 70, eating a Super Duper Burger and enjoying a dessert. That's at least, prognosis or no, what I'm moving toward every day. Yet I will consider a will, and I will be certain I'm telling everyone who matters just why they do. After all, it never hurts, and it's only fair.  Call it informed optimism.