Afternoon Pops and all y'all and I had hoped to have more to report than I do about my condition.
Met with the oncologist here on Wednesday and he has the bedside manner of Beaker, the Muppet, so he's off the social calendar.
Met with the oncology surgeon for my follow up yesterday and the pathology reports are back and it is Abdocarcinoma, the most common form of gastric cancer while my wife's was the rarest form and started in the bile duct mine started in the gall bladder and it hid really well from them until he opened me up. The chemo treatment is identical.
The prognosis is treatable but incurable and terminal without treatment in 6 months and 6-12 with treatment. This, of course, is all based off what they know and the data they keep and they were on the mark with my wife with her prognosis.
Here's where this gets really tricky, no one can tell me what I am in for whichever direction I choose and I do not trust the medical oncologists because there's money in treating dying people. So, that's what I had hoped to report, what I am going to do but I just do not know. I also feel somewhat letdown by the medical community from the beginning on this. And they continue to do that so my trust in them is shaky.
My surgeon is tight with an oncologist that works for Texas Oncology, the company that treated my wife and treated her very well. Her doc was a man of compassion and empathy and 008 assures me that Mika, here in Marble Falls, is the same type of person and that I will like her better. This other oncologist is a good doctor I am sure but none of them are really better at their craft because it is basically all by the numbers. Might as well do that with someone that treats you as a person and not just a patient. The destination is the same but a better journey.
I know, you do not know what to say to a dying man so do not feel you have to say anything because as I think I have laid out for my friends in this thread, I have neither the love nor the passion for life and haven't in so long that I can't recall it. I do not fear death and there are times I would have welcomed it, too many times.
One blessing in this is that this depression I've been fighting most of my life actually makes exiting easier. You might think different, depressed guy on death row but there is now a way out instead of the path I might have chosen earlier that could lead to guilt with family and friends and that's just wrong. Whatever happens now, they know there is nothing they could have done and I find peace in that.
I will stay with you as long as I can and do my best to try and make you and me laugh which is my real purpose for being on this site and the old one. It was never about the Cowboys or football but about the people on these forums that enriched my life. And the special people of the Pops thread.
If you are one to pray, just ask God to make me strong to the end and go out on my own terms the best I can. The vision of how my Dad died is still too clear in my memory vault and that is my greatest fear of all.
I am not going to spend a lot of time on this because I've already had the word "morbid" used on me twice! by doctors because of my handling of the news but they have no idea how I handle things and I think it is perfectly fine to do Stand Up on Death Row. Has a nice ring to it.
I love you guys, I really do.
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Go Jerry Go Jerry
