Don't EVER Give Up!

When we left off, I was feeling much better but the local oncologist told me that the cancer drug I had been taking was not working and there were no other drugs that hadn’t been tried on me already. He set up an appointment with my original oncologist to see if there were any clinical trials available, but didn’t hold out much hope. He basically told me to go home and die, although not in so many words. While that was far from encouraging news, I was still upbeat at feeling better and happy to have escaped death’s ambush once again. I had accepted my fate months earlier and was at peace with it, but was in no hurry to finish the race.

So I went to see Dr. Whoosh in Gotham City again today to find out about any clinical trials. He came in the room with a frown on his face, which I thought meant that he agreed with the local guy’s opinion. He didn’t live up to my characterization of him today by spending nearly a half hour talking with me. While he was tactful and went to great lengths to say what a fine doctor the local guy is, in the end he thought his diagnosis was, to put it politely, total bull feathers.  He went over a list of items and essentially said that the cancer appeared to be barely different than it was when he last saw me about six months ago. I’m scheduled for a new CT scan in two weeks and a consult. If the new scan confirms his opinion I’ll probably be resuming treatment with the drug I was on earlier…this time under the care of Dr. Whoosh.

I feel like I’ve been on a roller coaster for the last couple of months. At death’s doorstep twice, placed in pallative care, talked to about hospice, poked and prodded for countless blood tests, scanned, and told there was no hope for me. On the other hand I’m feeling much better, I’ve lost about twenty pounds, my blood glucose is doing better than it has in several years, and I’ve been told the end is not as near as I was led to believe. Through it all I have had countless people praying for me and encouraging me in my struggle. God has intervened for me at least twice, and I suspect many times more than that. I ended one of my church bulletin articles a couple of years ago by asking God to strengthen my desire to pray. He has done that, and I believe He’s started answering my prayers more frequently as well.

Now for something completely different...

I’ve been promising to resume my humorous anecdotes and sarcastic commentary for a while, so I’ll tell a little tale on myself.  I own a lift chair. It’s like a La*Z*Boy recliner except it’s electric and will help stand you up if you’re unable to stand on your own. I don’t need it to stand up yet, but it does help my back and is very comfortable. I was relaxing in it a week or so ago and we had a power failure. Did you catch the part above where I said it was electric?  There’s no manual override. Battery backup you say? Yes, it does have two tiny 9 volt transistor batteries that are supposed to operate it ONE TIME in an emergency. You guessed it…they appeared to be dead as a pair of mackerels. Did I have extra batteries? Yes. Did I know where they were? Of course not. After spending a significant amount of time bemoaning my situation, I finally discovered that if I leaned forward as far as I could in my prone position, the chair would slowly move an inch or so when I pushed the correct button. After that effort, the batteries had to wait a while to recover. After several minutes of leaning and button pushing I finally had the chair up far enough that I could climb out of it. Do I know where the spare batteries are now? You betcha.