Sex, Drugs, Rock n’ Roll, Cancer, and Right Wing Death Panels

What Do You Do With This Kind of News?

“We’ve found a mass.”

Not something you want to hear from a doctor.  Especially your doctor.

It explains a little about where I disappeared to for the past couple of weeks.  I have been doing a lot of introspection, a lot of questioning of where I am and where I am headed, both in my life and with this blog.

I know I am not the only one who heard this kind of news.  On the day I heard it, my bet would be that thousands of others heard something similar.  Although I would like to think of myself as special, I know I am not, I know that I am just like anyone else who gets ill and struggles with it.

I don’t blame anyone.  If anyone had any hand in causing this, it would have been yours truly.  I was the one who was a druggie.  I did that out of choice back then. No mysterious disease caused my choices.  No twelve-step program saved me. I screwed up for several years, I made the choice to change.  The former of those choices are at the root of my current diagnosis.

On the other hand, my lack of treatment does rest, to some degree with others, but that is the subject of posts to come.

What I Know (And Don’t Know) for Sure

We all have death sentences.  Hearing it in terms of illness puts a different kind of exclamation point on it.  Here’s is what I know for sure -

• I have a tumor on my liver.

• It was found because I was in a lot of pain because it started bleeding about a month ago.

• This type of cancer, from what I have learned thus far, does not respond well to chemotherapy.

• I am fortunate that if it doen not continue to bleed, and a procedure they will be doing shrinks it a bit, it can be removed surgically.

• It hurts like hell at times.

• I learned that I really don’t know how to talk about this with friends. Or anyone for that matter.

• I also know that I happen to be one of millions of Americans who does not have health care.  I didn’t need this to clarify that debatefor me, but these idiots who are stalling the process of EVERYONE getting health care are murderers and imbeciles (Yes, that would mean you, Michelle Bachmann). And isn’t it interesting that anyone who has the ability to vote against health care for all already has health care.

• The only true “death panel” that affects millions is the lack of universal health care.

This Little Mortality Thing

This little mortality thing has tripped me up in my path in life. I had several medium to long term projects going and I am stuck in deciding how to handle them.  At this point, I think all I can do is keep working on the things I have been working on, and to continue writing.

As long as I can.