TODAY (untitled post)

Here's a strange headline...

"Tobacco plant useful for Cancer cure" http://in.ygoy.com/2008/07/23/tobacco-plant-useful-for-cancer-cure/

"Personalized vaccine made of tobacco plants, which normally cause cancer, can be used to help people suffering from lymphoma in challenging the disease according to US researchers."

Another interesting article worth holding on to: "Living with Cancer: Eight things you need to know" http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=living-with-cancer-8-things




On another note...a sad one Randy Pausch has lost his fight with Cancer. I posted about him a few weeks ago and linked to his now famous You Tube phenomenon "Last Lecture" (I still have yet to get his book)...I found this note on the Dallas Morning News website:

Just heard that Prof. Randy Pausch has died. He's the Carnegie Mellon comp-sci professor whose classroom lectures on facing his own terminal illness generated a huge online following that became a bestselling book, The Last Lecture.

His amusing, self-effacting delivery made him a YouTube hit, but he was more than a transitory pop-culture phenom. There's an enduring message here about living and dying with grace and gratefulness that reached millions of people, especially young adults, who might not have previously given those huge topics much thought.

His enduring line: "You cannot change the cards you are dealt, just how you play the hand." Randy Pausch accepted a lousy hand and played it brilliantly. Vaya con Dios



Go with God indeed...

I am so affected by news about a life lost to cancer. It has to be because I have been there and maybe sometimes I think just a little tiny sliver of survivor's guilt...

Ya know...why him? Why Tony Snow? Why Joel Siegel? Why Peter Boyle? Why did they lose their battles?

Why am I still here? Why did I get both Kidney cancer and Hodgkin's lymphoma and effectively beat them both? What am I still doing here?

Why did Lance Armstrong survive? Why did Jon Lester (pitcher) from the Boston Red Sox get NHL and beat it? Why did Melissa Etheridge or Sheryl Crow beat it? Why? Why some and not others?

Why do so many people either beat it or die from it every single day. What makes one person luckier than the next?

I know each of these people I mentioned above had to consider at one moment or another early on in their battle with cancer that "this is it..." -I say that with some certainty because I considered it. And for some of them (after a valiant fight) it actually was. We all know we are going to die but when you are forced to contemplate your own mortality even for a few seconds it sobers you up. The notion of death in our minds is always so many years off but then you get the news that it's cancer it's a cold hard slap in the face and a kick in the stomach at the same time.

When I hear of a loss it hits me harder each time. I know there were young kids left in the wake of Randy Pausch's passing and I think that's another reason it hits me hard.

I get the occasional comment from a reader now and again and I almost always read that they have lost a loved one to cancer and one comment recently thanked me for fighting it, beating it and sharing my life on-line. If everything happens for a reason and we all have some purpose on this earth...why did I get to beat down two cancers?

I still have not figured out what I am here to accomplish with my second chance at life...remember my Dr's called me a "Lucky Bastard" and my wife reiterated that same day while I sat in the infusion room that most people don't get to beat one cancer and I was in the process of beating two.

The previous vision of setting up a non-profit fell thru the cracks. My friend and I failed to see things exactly the same way and he took the idea and ran away with it. And I'm okay with that- it was his connection to Robbie Knievel that he felt was going to generate a lot of buzz. Check out this link: http://nicholaslegacyfund.com/ to get more information.

I also don't think I was ready to get that involved with such a huge undertaking at the time. Perhaps I am now.

In the meantime...I am working hard at the Honda dealership and trying to find time to write and maybe get back to cartooning (in some manner, shape or form) and maybe along the way I'll figure out what I'm supposed to be doing or I will leave my mark somewhere somehow by accident.

But in some way or another it will involve cancer awareness, cancer news, cancer breakthroughs and heath and wellness issues.

I have always been fond of water colors and abstract art. I don't doodle much anymore (mostly because of time) and I'm trying to keep journals for the kids to read someday and I would like to take a stab at writing (something more than a near weekly post to this blog)...remember when I posted almost daily?

Maybe I can combine water colors, cartoons, abstract art and essays and create some new mixed up medium that reaches the masses. Or maybe I'll write and illustrate a children's book about cancer since my kids were a bit too young to fully understand what was going on between November 4th 2006 (when I found the lump on my neck which lead to the ultrasound which lead to the CT scan...etc etc) and July 3rd 2007 (my last infusion of chemo).

So much to do, so many possibilities and not enough time to do any of it.



Such is life.

Take care of the BIG ROCKS first and deal with small rocks later.


Be well.