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My Cancer Odyssey: Update
Hi Everyone,
I had my post PET-Scan visit with my oncologist yesterday. The results were “not the best,” in her words. The formulation of chemo ingredients (Carboplatin and Etopocide) seems no longer effective. The number of metastases in the lungs have slightly increased and some slightly grew during the last chemo-cycle in early April. These “targets,” are too many and too separated for surgery or radiation therapy. She is switching to a newer infusion med named Lurbinectedin. The goal now is to extend life, to hold the Cancer at bay, and delay the late-stage need for dependence on pain meds.
So, like a lot of things we ask God for, He doesn’t say okay, nor no: He says, “just wait, be patient.”
But I want answers, NOW!
“Just wait, be patient. Keep doing your best in the meantime.”
That’s human life, on this little rock, whirling around an ordinary star in an obscure corner of one arm of an ordinary little galaxy in an extraordinarily vast, nearly-unknowable Universe of trillions of similar galaxies.
My immediate family asks, “How do you feel about it?” I’m cool with it. We’ve all gotta go someday. There’s an upside to having a “rough” time schedule for when it happens.
What does God mean by “Keep doing your best”? One has to lean on Him—or Her, depending on your religious preference—for hints or inklings of how to set priorities.
In answer to “How do YOU feel about it?” I told my wife, Donna, “There are just TOO many accounts from those who have crossed over the river Styx then have been jerked back to this side, not to lean toward the idea of human consciousness being automatically ‘eternal.’ But death is either that, or my several experiences of being under general anesthesia:
‘Count backward from a hundred.’
‘A hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight…’
‘Wake up you’re in recovery!’
No sense of elapsed time, no dreaming, nothing but blank-ness.”
Neither that blank-ness, nor the heavenly utopia reported by NDE experiencers, is anything to be feared. So, no, I am not afraid. I’m cool with it. So, I keep hearing that song, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina…” But my fear is that my momentary bravado comes across as the flippant posturing of a narcissist who doesn’t empathize, nor understand the agony of his friends and loved ones, when faced with news like I’m sharing right now. Maybe I am that guy. To at least a tiny degree, I am that guy. I know it. And I apologize for it. I love all you guys who are receiving this e-mail or reading it on my blog. You guys are the inspiration, not me. Your concern has been amazingly inspiring to me and has given me hope for an eventual better humanity, when our species finally gets it right. And we will get it right— eventually–as hard as that is to believe (given the nightly news shows.) In the meantime, “Keep doing your best.”
Love ya, Vern