Happy, sad, angry

The past week has been a mix of emotions - happy, sad, angry - the issue is cancer survival. The happy is pretty easy to deal with - there are plenty of people who manage to get through their cancer treatment and resume reasonably normal lives. I have friends who started treatment around the same time I did who have been given the good news and have started life again - this makes me happy. Someday, I hope to join them on the other side of that fence and be able to look back at a closed chapter.

But with the happy also comes sad - sadness for those who have fought the good fight, but ultimately lost. For me this has come closer and closer to home this year. Earlier in the year I experienced the first loss of a friend from our online cancer community, which hit me harder than I expected for someone that I emailed occasionally, but never spoke to or met in person. Now it has hit much closer with the loss last week of a friend who started treatment at the same time I did and was part of our church "cancer club" (motto: "We really don't want you as a member, but will do our best to help you once you're in."). In the end, it was a slow and emotionally trying time for her family that I can't imagine putting my family through. Her memorial service was last night, and I made it all of 15 seconds into the service before my eyes filled with tears, and had a pretty tough time not breaking down completely when her husband reminisced about her as images from her life were projected above him on the wall. I'm very sad about this and will likely be sad for some time. I'm also sad for friends for whom treatment started out optimistically, but have now seen progression (I have come to hate that word - "progression") of their cancer and are trying experimental treatment with the hope that the magic bullet will do the trick. I'm hoping I don't join their ranks and I'll admit that the last big jump in my marker numbers does have me a little rattled. I'll have results from my bone scan on Friday and a CT scan this coming Wednesday when I see my oncologist for my next treatment on Thursday.

And I'm angry, and I think I have a right to be angry, as does every cancer patient. As I prepare to give the opening talk at our Relay for Life kickoff on Sunday evening, I've been doing a little research so that I get my facts straight. Richard Nixon declared a "War on Cancer" in his 1971 State of the Union address and signed into law the National Cancer Act in December 1971. The National Cancer Act established additional funding for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) within the National Institute of Health. Whether this war has been successful in the intervening years is open to debate - incidence of cancer appears to have declined a few percent in recent years, perhaps some measure of success. But as a patient, I can't help but be more than ticked off - 500,000 Americans will die from cancer this year. Five Hundred Thousand people in a single year - no conventional war in our history has killed this number of Americans in a single year. Can this be regarded as a "success"? Why isn't a war that kills this many people front page news every day, with a list of casualties and media coverage of every battle won and lost? I will spare you any additional soapbox on how much we've spent on "conventional" war in the past five years, and note that funding for NCI has been cut every year since 2005 and is more than 1000 times smaller than funding the present "conventional" war. Ask me why I'm angry.

OK - angry time needs to be over - it's not healthy. Back to happy. Maybe more than happy - more like ecstatic over your generosity with my Relay for Life campaign. As I write this, I am at 84% of my goal of $2000 in the first 17 days of announcing this year's campaign. At this pace, I will make this goal by the time I make the presentation for our team's kickoff on Sunday night! This poses a pleasant dilemna for me - should I ease off when I reach the goal, should I keep plugging away and keep going and see how far I get beyond the original goal, or should I raise the goal and campaign furiously until the event on May 30-31? If I raise the goal, am I changing the rules in the middle of the game? Is that OK? Give me your feedback - haydnprong@yahoo.com; your comments are confidential (unless you specifically tell me - "Use my name" in your blog, I won't publish your name - you deserve privacy too). The link to my Relay for Life page: http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RelayForLifeGreatWestDivision?px=3638111&pg=personal&fr_id=5800

And finally - the great Oyster hunt continues (see November 25, 2007 post: http://haydnprong.blogspot.com/2007/11/happy-thanksgiving.html ). My buddy Tim scored big yesterday and brought over a dozen nice specimens - three each of four different varieties. Scoring for this round: #1 - Totten Inlet Virginica; #2 - Kumamoto; #3 - tie Hama Hama (very briny) & Penn Cove Select. The #1 and 2 positions remain unchanged in the overall scoring for tastiness, and the hunt will continue until we sample everything that is reasonably available for sale locally or by our own digging. And people say that I'm easily amused - maybe so - sometimes a good oyster will do it for me. Thanks Tim!