Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Immune?

   I sometimes wonder whether a person can be immune to cancer?  Some people don't get it.  Even smokers don't always get it.  There seems to be a thousand ways to get cancer and yet, some people don't get it.
   I don't have it now.  I have been thouroughly probed and prodded, examined from the inside out.  I have none.  It is all gone!  All but the idea.
   I don't know whether my cancer was fast and I caught it in time or slow and methodical and I caught it in time.  I know I had it pretty much everywhere.  What began as a lump on my neck had spread to my spine and spleen and my entire lymph system.  50-50 odds is what I was told, or maybe a little less.
  Six months later, 12 Chemos later, $130,000 later, all my hair gone later, and fifty pound light, it is gone.
I may have starved it to death!  Certainly what had become a comfortable host became uncomfortable.
   The cancer was always like an alien being, something that did not belong.
   I feel fine now and sometimes that worries me.  My hair is back.  My weight is back.  My strength is back.
In a way it is like I never had cancer.  Just a dream.  A nightmare really.  I am just like I was before cancer!
Why it snuck up on me in the first place I will never know.  I always wonder whether it could do so again?
   Maybe I am immune now.  I think that too.  Like sometimes a severe case of poison oak will give you future immunity.  Or you only get "chicken pox" once.
There are certainly days when I never give it a thought and I wonder if lack of gratitude will turn back to bite me!  Although I don't think the cancer was caused by a deplenishing well of gratitude.
   I am living now and welding, creating my kind of art and having fun.  It is summer and even with a late start my garden is doing well.  I ate the first tomato yesterday!
   I think once a month will be enough to post here.  It will remind me of where I have been.  To the very edge, looking over and not liking it one bit.

you can always find me HERE