April 22

I am in my third week of chemo. I have two weeks of oral and intravenous chemo then a week off. I am in week off now. After this I have two more cycles. My strength is good, my energy level was real good today. It has not been like that since I was first diagnosed. The biopsy and stent placement then chemo robbed me of any strength and left me in pain most of the time. I am now using Oxycontin which does not cloud my mind but it relieves the pains. There are so many sources of pain in my gut that I literally have trouble keeping track. As I figure out the source of the pain I work to resolve it if I can. Some of the paint comes from being irregular because of the pain meds. I take milk of magnesia. The pancreas hurts, take more pain meds. My blood sugar is out of whack, take more insulin. Fucking rash that showed up out of nowhere and covers me from the waist to my armpits, try some shit the doctor prescribes for odd rashes that show up on chemo patients (and don't scratch). Day in and day out like that. Today was spectacular because I was free of pain, clear headed and had energy to get a bunch of stuff done. I even rode my motorcycle around town.

The mental part. Nothing can prepare a mind for what is going on with me right now. Logically, death does not bother me. Recognizing the impact it will have on my wife, my family, all my friends, that is very hard. Recognizing that I will have to be one of the lucky 1 in 5 who survive just 6 months, bothersome. To be one of the lucky 1 in 20 who last 5 years, that is daunting. Hoping to be one of the lucky 5 or 6 in nearly 40,000 who actually recover or go into remission, that is some serious long term wishing and hoping. I spend some time pondering how long I might have to live and what might happen after I die. You don't even want to see what I could write about the other hundreds of thousands of things that plow through my mind every day as I struggle with the pain and poking myself with needles and figuring out what meds will actually work to solve the current issue and laying there in bed at night when everybody and everything else is in nighttime and my mind is working overtime to wrestle with yet another deep and disturbing question or thought. I write messages like this to my friends and family hoping to iron out one little issue at a time so eventually I can get some sort of handle on it all. Philosophy 101 through Ph.D. in my own night school, over just a few short months of study and my doctoral thesis is being written in email messages to people I know and love.