Dead man walking

The astute might have noticed a change in the description of this blog page.  It went from “The truth as I see it” to “Dead man walking.”  Why is that, Lex?  Well, I have not been feeling well for many months.  After several doctors’ appointments and more tests than finals week at The Ohio State University, the doctors have discovered a cancerous tumor on my pancreas.

Diagnosis: Stage 3 locally advanced pancreatic cancer

Prognosis: Unknown.  Statistically, survival is 8 months to 3 years.

Treatment: 4 chemotherapy treatments over 8 weeks starting today/tomorrow in the hope of shrinking the cancer enough to allow surgery in future.  Doctors now say chemo could last as long as 10 months.  Oh joy.

Lex understands the long tough road that lies ahead. I will tell you this: I expect to thread the needle with this treatment and move on to recovery. 

Lex puts it like this:

Like everything on God’s green Earth, I’m dying.  The big difference is that I’m dying at a much more rapid rate than most of the other things and probably have been for more than a decade.  Some time ago an illegal cancer cell snuck across the border of my body.  The cancer cell set up in a sanctuary organ of my body - the pancreas.

The illegal cancer cell probably came looking for a better life.  Formerly a rather healthy host, the cancer likely found its new host a more desirable home than the sh*thole the cancer came from.  The word got out and before the sanctuary pancreas knew it, it was filled with illegal cancer cells living the good life off of a healthy host.

The illegal alien cancer cell put the word out that there were generous benefits available at Lex’s healthy pancreas.  Other cancer cells were soon migrating in to do the work Lex’s pancreatic cells wouldn’t do.  Then they chain migrated bring in entire families. 

The illegal alien cells never did what normal cells do: integrate in into the normal cycles and functions of Lex’s body.  They never integrated.  They brought in the flag, language and customs of their old country.  They congregated in a spot on the pancreas where they refused accept the language and culture of the host organ.  They just took over.  The pancreas thought, “What the hell difference can a few illegal alien cells make?  There are billions of cells in the pancreas. A small spot of illegal cells cannot possibly be harmful.”

They weren’t at first, but over the decade or more that the cancer cells have had free reign in the sanctuary organ they divided at their own rate.  They refused to accept the body’s natural order of things, refusing to limit their turn at the buffet to the normal time other cells took.  They refused accept the normal custom of one cell in as one cell went out.  They came.  They stayed.  They multiplied.  They refuse to leave.

Now the few cells have multiplied to the point that they have limited the host pancreas’ ability to perform its job.  The enclave has wrapped itself around vital structures making forcible removal impossible at this point.  So the authorities think the best policy is to remove the illegal alien cell at the same rate as other healthy cells in Lex's body.     

That process will cause the host much strain and distress.  The crazy thing is, that the illegal aliens coming in looking for a better life have wrecked the host and turned it into the sh*thole the illegal alien cells were trying to escape.  They have destroyed the host and in the process have destroyed themselves.  It’s crazy.

This is long way of saying, Lex starts chemo therapy to shrink a cancerous tumor from my pancreas. This treatment may make daily postings impossible.  It may also mean the focus may change from right wing diatribes to more thoughtful postings from time to time.

It’s all new.  We’ll see how this unfolds.