My Cancer

I have cancer.

The above is a sentence, a whole paragraph, a book, a school of research, a life altering three little words. Two weeks ago I saw a doctor, last week the labs came back positive, tomorrow I am having surgery. "I have cancer" is kind of a procrastination-buster, things happen and people move. From up above in space looking down everything looks about the same, just one small additional lump, but the feelings I have, the expressions of caring, love, and support others say to me. All this invisible yet very dense psychic energy is shifting around and being exchanged. Things are in fact very different.

My biggest immediate need is complex and thorough health-care. For this need, I am immensely grateful that I am eligible for health-care benefit due to my years in the U.S.Navy. I spent eight years attached to the Navy, and for most of that time I was a deep-sea diver. All veterans are able to apply for VA health-care benefits, not all veterans receive benefits. I applied, and was accepted. My category is poverty. Having health-care has considerably reduced my anxiety. I've have gone from a passive observer of the national debate on Universal Health-Care to a sympathetic supporter of all folks having health-care available when needs arise. I cannot begin to think how much more difficult this week, or this next year might have been if my immediate needs were both needing to get treatment for cancer and needing to find out somehow, someway to get the aforementioned treatment. What stress at exactly the wrong time in persons life.

So, I have a cancer that has spread to a lymph node in my neck. Tomorrow the good Ear, Nose, and Throat team of doctors Wang and Tsai are going to go in through my mouth and look around as much as possible. Taking biopsies, taking out tonsils, and looking for anything suspicious. If they find out the primary source from which the cancer spread to the lymph node, that will be very good. We will then treat cancer of the (whatever they find) and its cancerous child the lymph node. Short of identifying the primary source we will just treat a cancerous lymph node itself and hope whatever spread it in the first place doesn't keep on spreading.

How much should I write? Should I publicly dissemination medical details of my life? Will the exercise make me feel better. Will it inform concerned readers and lessen their own anxieties. Perhaps, and that is my motivation. If I should fail to accomplish these, I'll take solace in knowing my motives were spot on.