In the movies when the hero is hanging on to some high precarious perch somebody always tells him "don't look down". Well that advice goes for real life too.

Yesterday I was doing some research to clear up a disagreement between me and Janice. The essence of the question was the difference between a field trial and a clinical trial. In the course of doing that research on line I stumbled into the midst of all the research being done on pancreatic cancer. Then it got more particular, the research being done on the regimen I am under which is using Gemxar, Taxatere and Xolodan, or GTX. These are new clinical and field trials, I would guess it came about in the last couple of years. At any rate it is purportedly much more successful than any previous treatment for pancreatic cancer. The baseline subject for the trials was a pancreatic patient with metastasized cancer, usually to the liver. The results are scant, the trials are on small groups of 4 to 6 patients. There were some patients who died during the first set of three cycles or they could not handle the side effects of chemo, which are pretty considerable. There were some that lived through the first cycle and most of them saw the cancer on the liver go away. But still, with a 40% improvement in results, there is no guarantee of living through it all and seeing a full recovery. The only guarantee was that more people were living longer, but there was not a great big dent in the mortality numbers, lots of pancreatic patients are still dying, and dying fairly quickly under the GTX regimen.

Well, after a few hours of research and seeing all sorts of numbers go by I was in a pancreatic cancer fact overload. I was staring at my life in those numbers and they were not good. I was looking down at the potential fall if I let go. I was freaked out. I sat out on the deck and sipped wine and contemplated it all. My first realization was that I had handled chemo well enough that the oncologist thought I was healthy enough to undergo a second set of chemo. (The field and clinical trials only had one set of chemo to base their numbers on.) That I was healthy enough to undergo the second set of chemo was a real encouragement. Then I realized that I was performing as well or better than most people under the trails because I had actually put on weight and had minimal side effects from chemo, in addition to losing the mass on my liver. I found enough encouragement in all that to settle down and accept that while situation was not cause for wild eyed optimism, it wasn't cause for doom and gloom either. Actually, I have reason to look forward to the next CT scan because I may actually see the cancer mass reduced in size and that would mean an important milestone had been reached. If the mass in my pancreas is reduced in size that means that there is hope for a full recovery because the GTX is affecting the growth of the cancer.

But I still had several hours of sheer terror while I analyzed the mortality figures. It was a little like reading the coroner's report on my own death for a while. Then I got a perspective and I calmed down. Today I can talk rationally about it all. I even feel optimistic. Tough road to getting there though. Just one of many nights I am going to have where I get a little freaked and not too sure about this whole scene. Sure cleans out the emotional closets for a guy though. I feel like I went to a spa for a few days of psycho therapy. Good day today. I can even accept 102 degrees with 50% humidity because that is how life is in Texas in the summer. And life is where it is these days. I am starting to see the whole 'every day is magic' viewpoint.