Subject: Is that all there is, my friend? (Ed wrote this on April 29) You have to admire Peggy Lee. Not just as a great singer. Remember her name was mud in Hollywood because she had the ovaries to sue the Disney organization for withholding royalties. Not only that, but when the Disney people sneered down their noses at the idea of settling out of court, Lee took them to trial and kicked mouse-butt all over the courtroom. A couple of weeks ago, her '69 hit that I used in the subject line of this e-mail kept running through my head. Everything seemed so easy. Eight weeks of inconvenience in the form of chemotherapy, then a CAT scan and the cancer will be gone. Wait a minute! Is that all there is? cancer patients are supposed to suffer, physically and mentally. When I was a kid, I learned there were two kinds of death sentences. Judges passed out the easy ones, where all you did was go down to Sing-Sing and sit in "Old Sparky" for a few seconds. Then there was the dreaded sentence passed by doctors in the form of a diagnosis of the "Big C" which meant a slow, certain, painful and debilitating death. So why am I getting off so easy? Advances in technology, maybe. I can live with the easy route, no problemo. Then I had the repeat CAT scan. That's *not* all there is, after all. If you're into medical terminology, I've posted both CAT scan reports at: http://www.americanrevolution.org/ct.html If you look at medicalese and see gibberish, the key word is in the final sentence of the 14 April report: "worsening." Seeing that word displeased me. There's also some stuff about "suspicious" areas in the liver. You have to understand that before someone can become Board Certified in Radiology, they have to graduate from Equivocation School. I asked my oncologist point blank if I have liver cancer, and he shrugged and said "probably." So we headed south for a couple of days in the Holy City (that's how 18th century nuts refer to Williamsburg) for a mental health vacation. Stayed with a friend outside of Silver Spring, goofed around. Now back on chemo. Last session, they zapped me with some new stuff that was only approved for humans about four years ago. the nurse that explained it said that of all the patients she has given it to, there have been only two bad reactions. I bit my tongue rather than ask if she'd given it to a total of more than two patients. Monday (27 April) they swapped out one of the three main drugs for something new. So we'll do that for awhile and see what happens. Back to Peggy Lee - the year after "Is That All There Is?" she had another hit single, "One More Ride On The Merry-Go-Round." Lee often quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson on her failing health in her later years: "God's will will not be made manifest by cowards." Best, Saint