Life and Death and everything in between...

It's been a few weeks since my last post, obviously. I have been scribbling in composition notebooks for a while, mostly as journals. I have a screwy idea for a short story or novel rattling around in my head... I'm letting it stew a while.

In the last couple of weeks I have had the wonderfully neglectful surgeon who inserted my port finally call and line up a time and place to remove the damned thing (after I gave up on him and lined up my own surgeon, time and place)...only to start a new job at a Honda dealership and cancel the surgeon I decided to call because it would have been extremely convenient to just let the original jerkweed surgeon take it out.

That day came and went as his office called at 9 am the day of to tell me Dr S had a sudden schedule change and had to bump me into the next day. It was a beautiful day and I'm willing to bet he blew me off for a round of golf...

Needless to say the port is still in my chest. It's been two months since my last treatment. Seems like yesterday and a lifetime ago at the same time. I'm thinking of having it flushed and waiting to have it removed after my CT scan in October. It's been this long what's another month?

Today, my wife and I had to euthanize one of our cats. "Zoe" was 13 years old and was diagnosed with...lymphoma, two weeks ago. She apparently had been ill for some time unbeknownst to us. The really hard part about today was relating this to the kids. My son is 3.5 years old. For as long as he has been on this earth we have had 3 cats.

After the cat was put down the vet placed her in a box and returned her to us. Now, the kids knew Zoe was sick, they knew she wasn't getting around all that well recently, she stopped eating and as far as we could tell stopped drinking. It was only a matter of time. We did discuss this with both of them.

The kids got a quick good bye with the cat as we dropped them off at my in-laws house before we took the cat to the vet. Afterwards we then picked up the kids and drove to my parents house and laid Zoe's remains to rest. The kids came outside where my dad and I stood by the hole my dad previously dug and as the kids got another chance to say goodbye my daughter started to cry, my son didn't understand but decided to help my father put the dirt on the box that held the cat.

It was the innocence of my son a few seconds later that floored me as he declared from out of nowhere that Zoe was his favorite. He continued to discuss this later on once we were home that Zoe was his friend and he wanted to know two things...

When were we going to get Zoe out of the dirt? and How was Zoe going to eat breakfast?

By now I was having a hard time maintaining my composure. I was staring into the sincere eyes of a 3 and a half year old little boy wildly confused as to why we put his favorite cat in a box and put that box in the ground, he was looking for answers and it was more than I could stand.

I did the best I could to explain the hows and whys of things, the circle of life if you will but almost lost the point several times as he was trying to put it all together in his little head and just kept asking why Zoe was under the dirt. My daughter who is 7 just sat on her bed and sobbed.

It will be a rough couple of days ahead as the kids dwell on the missing cat. But the perspective of life and death and everything in between comes sharply into focus considering the cat wasn't just old but she had the feline version of the disease I had.

We did not make this connection for this kids. Even if my daughter may have overheard the word cancer before and she knew I was "sick" for a while this year-as best as I can recall the word "lymphoma" never came up about me, nor did the phrase "Daddy has cancer" or that lymphoma is cancer.

I know we told my daughter Zoe had "lymphoma" but she didn't ask any questions past that one so to that end-ask a simple question, get a simple answer. Whew!

But friends of ours who live next door also recently lost a cat to lymphoma and it makes me wonder about what is in the water, the air or the soil where we live. Anyone who has read this blog from the beginning should remember that I wrote about my mother-in-law having NHL (Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma) twice and Breast Cancer just recently. My mother -in-law lived in the same condo association we do now.

It makes me wonder about the cancer rates here in the complex as well as in town. Human or Feline or Canine or otherwise...it makes me think about what is running thru my son's mind as he tries to understand death and it brings home his fears when I was in the hospital for two days when they removed my kidney. He didn't understand just having turned three why I went missing for two days only to come home "different".

He had a very hard time understanding why I was shuffling around after surgery like I fell out of an airplane and landed on my back. He didn't understand why I couldn't pick him up. I don't know how close to death I could have been (or was) if the kidney cancer had spread or if the lymphoma went unchecked. How close was I?

When I see my children mourning their cat taken from them by a disease that I also had this year...it freaks me out a little bit.

What if we didn't catch my cancer until I was as far along as Zoe?

Scary thoughts.

I have recently read that there are a few people out there who are looking at Cancer as a chronic disease like any other, a disease that too many people get today. A disease that exists because we live in a toxic environment. We are killing ourselves...but we know this already.

The point is that it's not about a cure anymore it's about disease management and survivorship instead.

It is NOT about a CURE. (there is no cure for cancer)

It's about DISEASE MANAGEMENT and SURVIVORSHIP.

The odds of getting cancer are too great. The fight is not to find a cure but to better manage the disease, keep it check and survive it. It's that wide spread. It's like catching a cold.

It's a lot like life isn't it?

I read that "Life is sexually transmitted" the joke here is; of course LIFE is sexually transmitted what other way is there?

But maybe "Life" is nothing more than a "Disease" that mankind has been spreading since Adam...


Life is an STD.




it's not about a cure...it's about survivorship.