Lucky and Aggressive

I feel sort of hungover today, and it isn't particularly from the two glasses of wine I had last night. Yesterday was an emotional day. First the news from the doctor, then hours of contacting people--—family, Clarion West, University of Wisconsin at Madison, speaking dates and workshop dates. There is no appropriate way to title an email saying you can't meet your obligation because of a scary sounding disease. This is why I started my blog in the first place, so I wouldn't have to tell people over and over.

Waking up this morning to twenty-eight well-wishes, now that was really great. Thanks everyone. I mean, I'm a writer. Now only am a buoyed by everyone's good thoughts, but hell, I got twenty-eight comments on my blog! My sister has already suggested (tongue in cheek) that I relapsed so I'd have something to write about in the blog.

Monday Bob is taking the day off and taking me on a round of tests--—heart and lungs--and then a meeting with the surgeon who will perform the biopsy. The enlarged lymph nodes are high in the center of my chest, below the thymus gland. They're a bit of a pain to get to. So I'll carry my CT Scans and we'll sit while he reviews the scans, and as Doctor Schnur said, looks at me to confirm that I'm healthy. I really respect that. There are a thousand things that a doctor can assess in an instant that never show up in a CT scan.

I got to see my PET Scans. They're very interesting. I can see the cluster of diseased nodes. And my liver, faint as a cloud. It's a strange way to look at a human body. The way a PET scan works is they injected me with radioactive glucose and then after thirty to forty minutes, they scan to see where the glucose is concentrated. Malignancies metabolize really fast, so the glucose concentrates there. They show up black on a pale gray photo.

I surely do want and plan to survive this and live for many many years after, but this time around, I thinking that I will concentrate much more on the here and now. One of the questions I asked my doctor was if the high dose chemo doesn't in the end cure me, will it give me time to do things like travel? And he said definitely.

This wasn't a question I would even have thought to address the last time around.

I'm not a believer in the power of positive thinking or the effect of my thoughts on my malignancy. But I am a big believer in the effect of my thoughts on the moment in which I am living. I had some miserable days when I first heard that there was something on the CAT scan, and I just don't want to do those kind of days. That said, I told my doctor that I felt we needed to be lucky and aggressive. Lucky because, well, so much is beyond anyone's control. Aggressive because that is what is in our control, and the best strategy for long term.

That's my medical motto these days. Lucky and aggressive.