Imade an important discovery. I learned to my surprise and my doctor's that I had cancer. This was more than a shock because, for a few months, we both thought I had a sports injury. It started in late September when, after a 190-pound leg extension at my gym, I suffered a mean groin pain and thought I had developed a hernia.
My internist said I was OK, so Ilse and I went off on a great vacation in South Africa, where my groin bothered me only when I got into or out of our rental car. (I drove 1,900 miles on great roads, but I frequently had to stop in Kruger National Park because elephants, rhinos, zebras, impalas, giraffes and lions have the right of way.)
Back home in early November, I played racquetball. Though I had been playing for years, this time I felt excruciating pain in my groin. My internist now declared that I did indeed have a hernia. He sent me for surgery, which did not help one iota. So he prescribed an antibiotic for a possible mild infection. Then, when that didn't work, he sent me to a physical therapist, who increased the pain. Then off to a sports doctor (called an orthopedist), who sent me to physical therapy despite my insistence that PT helped me not at all. This orthopedist had to leave town and didn't want to be bothered checking further. He was the type of doctor, I think, who felt that medicine would be a great profession if you didn't have to bother with sick people.
How it started
After my second round of useless physical therapy, a series of tests indicated that my pain was due to secondary bone cancer chewing away at my pelvic bone, emanating from cancer in my lung, probably due to heavy smoking for many years before I quit some 20 years ago. I think the lung cancer just sat there for a long time before deciding to get active and spread. (I read somewhere that smoking is bad for your health and I recommend against it. After all, if you can't believe what you read, what can you believe?)
At any rate, the discovery of cancer has modified some of my plans, which were based on an assumption that I was extremely healthy, almost never skipping a day of work due to illness, and possibly immortal-as I had seen no scientific proof that I would one day die. Nevertheless, I did feel that I might like to die suddenly at the age of 95, shot by an irate husband.
I now assume, without benefit of unassailable proof, that I might die one day, not the first to do so and probably not the last. My prognosis, I see now, may be like everybody else's.
Meanwhile, with my cancer pain largely under control, what to do?
I decided to live each day to the fullest, to spend more time smelling the roses and watching sunsets, to travel more to less-traveled parts of this small planet, to enjoy my friends and loved ones and to cherish my kids and kids' kids more than ever.
Why didn't I think of that long ago when I had more time?
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