Watching War

The following essay is from the NPR My Cancer weekly podcast:

I'm going to talk about a different subject today — or at least slightly different. But bear with me. I will get around to making a point eventually. I promise.

The My Cancer project has been going for a month now, and I have to say that I have been overwhelmed by the response. Not so much in terms of numbers, but in what all of you have been saying. The eloquence, courage and intelligence of what you have said is truly inspiring.

And the common theme of what you have written and what I have tried to say all comes down to one thing: life. We are all fighting to live. It's not just about living longer, although I don't think any of us would argue with that. It's about how we live. Each day is precious, whether you have cancer or not. Sometimes we forget that.

I pretty much made my career off of the deaths of others. I've covered more than a dozen wars. For whatever reasons, it turned out that I was pretty good at it. And I was also willing to go. That was a big part of it.

Over the last quarter century or so, I have literally seen tens of thousands of people die. From the jungles of Central and South America to the desert and street fighting of the Middle East to the killing fields of Africa — that's what I did. I went and watched while other people died. Sometimes there were so many you couldn't really grasp what was happening. A mass grave is truly an example of mankind at its worst.

And there are some individuals whose deaths I will never forget. The tiny boy in a Rwandan hell, who died at my feet while I looked in his eyes. He's with me every moment of every day.

And now I watch the news and see war again. People killing each other with great efficiency and enthusiasm. What's wrong with all of us?

I guess that my cancer has made me think of death in a different way — a much more personal way. On a battlefield, you can almost feel it when Death is on the prowl. You, like everyone else there, just hope that this time, he'll pass you by. Mine most likely won't be a death on some foreign field. It won't be random. It will be personal and private. That's something that's denied to a lot of people.

I've come to hate war. No, hate is not a strong enough word. I despise it. And yet it just goes on and on. I'm working on a television project that may very well take me back to Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder, first of all, if I would be up to it physically. But I also wonder how I'd handle it mentally. I've changed. Death and I are hardly strangers. I've seen his work up close. I guess I just wonder if our relationship has changed.

Leroy Sievers

7:15 AM ET | 07-31-2006 | permalink | comments (9) | e-mail post

Advice for Friends

A man named Erick wrote in the other day. His best friend has been diagnosed with lymphoma.

"I've been strong as nails for him through all the onslaught of doctors and tests, but this one I don't know how to prepare myself. I almost asked the hospital if I could volunteer in a chemotherapy center just to see what I'll be facing, but I don't know.

I guess what I'm looking for from anyone is answers. As someone supporting a loved one through this fight, what can I expect? His appearance, his mood, etc. Anything will help."

I wish I had the answers. It's funny, the other day a friend asked me for advice on how to deal with an illness in her family. I'm not an expert. I'm just someone who's on the same journey. We all react differently, but at the same time, I guess we all react the same way.

Expect tears, yours and his. This is scary stuff. There are times when all you can do is cry. Don't be afraid to show your own tears, and don't be afraid to see his.

Fatigue. He'll get tired out by the treatment. And, in some ways, sleep is a refuge. Go to sleep and you just don't have to face all this, at least for a little while.

He may get impatient, become short with people around him. I know I did. I got so tired of people asking me how I was feeling at that moment. But I had to remind myself that they meant well, that they wanted to help and that was really the only way they could. He'll learn that too.

Normalcy. That's the greatest gift you can give. His world has changed in an instant — it will never be the same again. Ever. If you can stand it, and it's going to be hard, try to give him a little bit of his life the way it used to be. Go to a restaurant or a movie. Talk about sports, politics, TV, anything... but don't mention that elephant in the room. Those few minutes when you forget about having cancer, those are golden.

But don't be afraid to talk about it when he wants to or when you need to. That's equally important. It may be difficult to hear his thoughts, especially on the bad days, but he needs to be able to express them.

But really, it all comes down to one bit of advice that you already know. Just be his friend, the friend that you were before this happened. That's all. That's enough.

Leroy Sievers

6:18 AM ET | 07-31-2006 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

It's Not Always Easy to Find the Strength

I wish I could answer all of the e-mails that come in. I can't, unfortunately, but I do read them all. And they are amazing, like the people that write them. So many are full of courage, determination, humor and above all, humanity. But there are some that just grab you.

A woman named Ruth wrote in. She had started chemo but had to stop because the side effects were just too much.

"I want to beat this, but I just couldn't do the medicine. Tomorrow I go back to find out what they will put me on next time. I used to have a positive attitude — what happened to me? I don't want to die, of course, but I'm so scared and confused."

Ruth, we're all scared and confused, at least part of the time. It's not easy to find the strength that we all need every day. There are always moments — sometimes when you wake up, or out of nowhere in the middle of the day, or in the dark hours of the night — when the fear can become almost too much to bear.

And we all ask ourselves the questions that have no answers. Why is this happening? What's going to happen? When? What should I do? We are being tested in the most difficult way. But I also believe that all of us have the strength — and if we don't have it, our loved ones may have it for us — to get through this.

I wish there was more I could say to Ruth, but I'm sure she's heard it all before. Each of us fighting this disease has to find the ways to cope that work best for us. For some, it's religion; for others diet, humor or just plain old determination. But we all stumble. Those facades that we so carefully construct and try to maintain do crack or crumble sometimes. And that's just part of life.

So for Ruth and for everyone else out there who feels that fear, sadness or even hopelessness, I just have this to say: Don't give up. You're not alone.

Leroy Sievers

6:39 AM ET | 07-28-2006 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

The Tingling Side Effects of Chemo

"We still want you to be able to button your shirt." That's what my doctor said. He was talking about neuropathy, something I had never heard of eight months ago, but something that is now part of my daily life.

Neuropathy is a side effect of the chemo. Just about everyone on chemo gets it and sometimes it lasts long after the chemo is stopped. It's a tingling in the hands and feet. Not a pleasant kind of tingling. It's actually pretty annoying. My feet tingle a good part of the time. There's nothing I can do about it. Nothing can make it stop or go away, except stopping the chemo.

As for my hands, they don't tingle. But it feels like someone is squeezing the tips of my fingers — and they don't stop. I can't really say that you get used to it. I certainly haven't, but I guess you learn to tolerate it.

I finished my original round of chemo and now I'm on a lesser regimen, sort of a maintenance program. That can go on as long as I want, or, as my doctor put it, "as long as I can stand it." It's the neuropathy that's the key. When that becomes bad enough or annoying enough, then I can stop taking the drug.

The nausea from chemo comes and goes. For me, it's worse in the morning, but it passes. But the neuropathy is always there, like a toothache. It's a virtually constant reminder of what's going on. I can live with it — for now. It's a little annoying when I type, like I'm doing now, but otherwise, I can still button my shirt.

I can't imagine how bad it will have to get to drive me to stop the chemo. And in many cases, it doesn't go away immediately. It can linger for months. In the overall picture, it's a minor annoyance, but an annoyance it is. I guess if people see me wearing only T-shirts or polo shirts — shirts that don't need to be buttoned — then it will be time to stop. After all, style is still important.

Leroy Sievers

6:16 AM ET | 07-27-2006 | permalink | comments (16) | e-mail post

How Much Do You Tell?

Honesty is the best policy. Isn't that what we're taught from childhood? OK, so the whole story about George Washington and the cherry tree was a lie, but it's the thought that counts. I've written before about the whole issue of honesty and many of you have commented about it, too. How much do you tell? Should you tell everything? Can people — to quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men — "handle the truth?"

Here's what a woman named Cherie wrote in to say:

"I have stage four colorectal cancer with liver mets. This is a strange journey, one I am not entirely sure I can share with my loved ones. I am scared it might rob them of the hope I see in their eyes. The hope which I sometimes don't believe in."

For those of you who may not know the jargon of cancer, a little bit of translation: Stage four is the worst, last stage of cancer. "Mets" is short for metastasized, meaning that the cancer has spread — in Cherie's case, to her liver. I'm a stage four, too, with lung and brain mets, although the brain tumor was cut out. The doctors thought I had a liver met, too, but it turned out that whatever it was that they saw, it wasn't a tumor.

Not that it matters much. When I was first told I had five tumors in my lungs, I was devastated. But then one of my doctors explained that, one tumor or five, there really isn't that much difference. Chemo will attack them all. I guess having cancer is like the old line that you can't be a little bit pregnant. You can't have a little cancer — either you do or you don't.

But Cherie's main point is that she doesn't want to let the truth rob her friends of their hope. I agree completely. I learned that lesson early on, when I told too many people what my early prognoses were. I stopped doing that. It's important that they have hope.

But what about hope for the patient? Not talking about it and keeping it all inside — or at least a lot of it — can make you pretty lonely. How do you balance the need to talk about what is happening to you with the tears of a close friend when you tell him or her the truth? There's no simple answer.

I guess it's up to us to try to decide as best we can. Jack Nicholson may have been right, but those of us with cancer were never asked whether we could handle the truth.

Leroy Sievers

7:03 AM ET | 07-26-2006 | permalink | comments (17) | e-mail post

Waiting for the Cavalry

Wait for the cavalry. They should be here any minute. Or month. Or year. That's sort of the advice that many cancer patients are given. Just hang on as long as you can. People are working on this. There should be a breakthrough any day now.

There have been tremendous advances in the treatment of cancer. And new research offers new hope. So doctors will tell you to just try to hang on, try to live as long as you can and maybe the cavalry will get here in time.

It's sort of amazing that with all of the money, time and knowledge that has been poured into the war on cancer, there still isn't a cure. How could that be? Is it really that tough? Apparently so.

Some solutions are tantalizingly close. There's something called the Gamma Knife. It's radiation, focused as precisely as a laser beam. It's used on the brain. I had the procedure done to clean up residual cancer cells after I had my brain tumor removed.

It's truly an amazing procedure. The worst part is that they literally screw your head into a metal framework so that they can immobilize your brain. After that, it's painless. You see nothing, hear nothing. The doctors map out very precisely what they need the machine to do, and then it's done. Easy.

Well, at least it's easy on the brain, which can be immobilized. If they could figure out how to use that on the lungs, for instance, which are constantly moving, then I could go in tomorrow and be done with all this. This is an engineering problem, not a medical one. Somewhere, someone has to be able to figure out how to do this.

Genetics, stem cells, cloning. Who knows what will finally offer the solution? They are finding new chemo drugs that will hopefully be more effective and less debilitating. Somewhere, some grad student in a basement may have the answer. And so the doctors repeat their mantra: Just hang on. Help is on the way. There could be a breakthrough any day.

Well, I have just one bit of advice for the cavalry. Ride faster.

Leroy Sievers

6:35 AM ET | 07-25-2006 | permalink | comments (10) | e-mail post

Commentary: Waiting for Test Results

The following is a commentary from Morning Edition, July 24, 2006:

It's the waiting that's the worst. Or maybe it's the fear of the unknown that's worse. Maybe it's all just bad. The life of someone who has cancer plays to a very different rhythm. You go from one cycle of chemo to the next. You don't know if it's working. It just takes on a life of its own. You get a little shortsighted, counting the days until your next break.

In some ways, taking chemo is an act of faith. Until the doctors take a look, you just have to hope — or maybe even believe — that it's working. Because as unpleasant as it can be, it would be doubly unpleasant if all the nausea, all the fatigue, all that was for nothing.

Now there's a blood test for a cancer marker that you take every couple of months. When I started chemo, I had a score of 21. Then it went to 14, and then seven. Zero, of course, means no cancer. I was excited, the doctors were excited. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction. Until they did the scans. No change in the tumors. That blood test can mean a lot of different things. In my case, it meant nothing.

The scans are the real markers. Those you have every couple of months, too. They're painless, except you have to drink a really foul mixture of chemicals and raspberry-flavored drink. I assume someone at the hospital thought the raspberry drink would make the concoction go down easier. It doesn't. Trust me.

Basically you get run through a machine for a while. And then the games begin. The technicians are instructed to tell the patients nothing. Trained radiologists have to read the scans, and they don't want a technician to give the patient bad information. The official results don't come in for hours. So of course, you, as the patient, try to trick, beg or grovel to get some kind of hint. You try to look at the screen over the tech's shoulders, as if you had any idea what you were looking at. You ask if they see anything big. Usually, though, they go by their training and give you nothing.

And then, after hours that seem like days, the doctor will come to tell you what he or she saw. Again, you're desperately trying to read the clues, sort of like in a poker game. Except it's a game where the other player has all the cards. The doctor knows.

And then you know, for good or bad. And even if the news is bad, it really is better to finally know. At least that's what I tell myself. These days, I don't really get nervous until the doctor comes in. The news is usually so uniformly bad that every time, you just hope for a little bit of hope.

Why am I thinking about all this? Because I have my scans next week. And maybe there'll be some good news, right?

Leroy Sievers

7:08 AM ET | 07-24-2006 | permalink | comments (59) | e-mail post

Don't Forget the Wounded

My nurses are really very good. They stick a needle in your arm, draw blood and have it out almost before you know it. I've become friends with several of them. I was something of a curiosity at first, because apparently the veins in my arms go crosswise instead of lengthwise. I'm not sure what, if anything, that means, but they seemed interested.

I was in this morning for bloodwork. They always draw blood into a couple of color-coded tubes. About an hour later, I'm given a printout with numbers that I really don't understand. I usually just ask my chemo nurse if there's anything to worry about.

I was talking with the nurse who drew my blood this morning. It was the usual: complaining about the heat, traffic and all that. But then she said that she was going to a meeting where, for the first time, they were going to offer counseling to the nurses.

She said that it is so hard for them because they lose virtually all of their patients. They only deal with cancer patients. She said that one man came in yesterday who was her age. She started to cry. It was worse a couple of years ago, she said, when the sadness and grief became almost too much to bear.

I've wondered about this a lot. The nurses and doctors do so much to try to save cancer patients even when they know that in most cases, it's a losing battle. They make friends with patients only to lose them, but then they are replaced by new patients, and new ones after them as the cancer epidemic just continues to roll.

How do they deal with it? How are they able to get up each morning and come to work? I don't know. I don't know where they get the strength.

I guess like any other war, when we talk about the war on cancer, we tend to focus on the fatalities. But like any other war, we need to make sure that we don't forget the wounded.

Leroy Sievers

6:34 AM ET | 07-24-2006 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

Different World, Different Me

I am learning a lot from this whole blog thing. First of all, I knew it already, but it's still shocking to me just how many of us there are out there. Too many. It seems that we have conquered so many other diseases that used to kill people; maybe cancer is one of the last ones left. But it strikes so many people.

But I am also reminded every day, in your notes and e-mails, just how wise and strong people are. It's reassuring. I'm sure that many — actually all — of us would have preferred not to be tested this way, but we weren't given a choice.

Every day, people write things that are worth thinking about. A woman named Jeri wrote in and talked about the joy found in a few minutes, or even hours, when cancer "goes away," forgotten. She called it returning to the "pre-diagnosis stage, where nothing can hurt you." That made me stop. It's only been about eight months for me, but it's hard to remember what life was like before. What did I worry about? How did I feel? Different world, different me.

But Jeri is right. There are times when you forget or are distracted and life is just normal for a while. And then it comes back. You can push it away, try to hold it down, but it always comes back.

A woman named Lisa wrote in and in a single phrase, described what I was trying to say the other day in talking about other people and how they feel that their problems are somehow less significant. Lisa talked about "the guilt of living."

That's something that soldiers know after a battle. That survivors of a disaster feel as they try to make sense of what happened. Why did I survive? Why did someone else die, and I didn't? Why was my loved one given this burden and not me? But Lisa was right when she said that the "guilt of living" is something to fear.

There is no sense to it. It can only eat away at you. When I was spending a lot of time overseas — usually in bad places — we used to always talk about the "luck of the draw." Walk down one road and live. Walk down another and die. Be born in the U.S. and lead a wonderful life. Be born in parts of Africa and know only starvation and death. It's all the luck of the draw. But to beat the poker references to death, all we can do in life is play the cards we're dealt.

So for all of you out there who may be feeling the "guilt of living," don't. Please.

Leroy Sievers

6:53 AM ET | 07-21-2006 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post

You Don't Get a Pass

I was on the phone with a friend of mine the other day and she said something that I have heard a million times by now. "My problems are nothing compared to yours." I know what she meant, but she's wrong.

Life doesn't stop just because someone gets sick. It hasn't stopped for me. I still have job issues, I'm looking at a stack of bills, the house was leaking after the last big storms — all the usual stuff. None of that stops. You don't get a pass once you're diagnosed with cancer.

And that's more than true for everyone else in our lives. The fact that I have a disease doesn't mean that my friends can't still have job problems, relationship crises, their own medical issues. Life goes on. I guess what I want to say today is for all of the people reading this who don't have cancer.

You don't have to apologize. Your problems are real. They were real before anyone you know got sick and they will continue to be real. I'm not offended when someone wants to complain about something. This isn't some twisted game of one-upmanship. I'm not going to say, "Well, that's nothing. I've got cancer."

I'm still a friend, I still want to help if I can and just lend a shoulder if that's all I can do. I want to listen to complaints. I want to still be able to be sympathetic, to maybe offer some advice. In short, I still want to be the person I was before I got sick.

Maybe that's who we are at our best. People who care about others. Whether that is affected by this disease or not, it's still a big part of who we are, or who we strive to be. Don't take that away from us. We still want to be your friends, just as all of you have stood by us when we needed you. That's just the way this all works. The act of sharing a problem shows that we have value as friends. No matter what, we need to hold onto that.

Leroy Sievers

6:03 AM ET | 07-20-2006 | permalink | comments (16) | e-mail post

You Might As Well Keep Trying

As I write this entry for the blog, I feel like... well, you know. I'm back on the chemo and I'm sick. It's a strange sort of "sick," though. It's artificial. When I take the pills, I get sick. When I stop, I get better. That's so different than a normal illness.

Usually, if you get the flu or something, there are things you can do to feel better and to get better. But chemo sickness is different. There's the fatigue that no nap can cure. The nausea that no hot tea can soothe. And the overall blah feeling that even chicken soup can't make go away. There's nothing that can make this better, other than reaching the bottom of this bottle of pills and taking the last ones. Then, for a week, I'm well.

But that doesn't stop you from trying to find something that will help. I try all sorts of different foods. Different things to drink. I nap, 'cause I have to, although like I said, it doesn't bring relief. It's a little frustrating, but it does remind me of a funny story.

Five years ago, the first time I had cancer, I was in the hospital after surgery. I was given an epidural, an injection in my back, and I was numb from the waist down. In my drug haze, I somehow became worried that they had made a mistake and that I was going to be numb forever. But, also fueled by the drugs, I came up with a plan.

If I kept moving my feet, I reasoned — none too clearly — that I could work the drugs out of my system. So I lay there in bed, moving my feet back and forth. Of course, since the drugs were being pumped nonstop into my body, my plan was doomed to failure. But that didn't dampen my enthusiasm.

Until one of the nurses came in and saw my feet moving. She looked at me with some concern and asked, "You're doing that on purpose, right?" It made me laugh.

But it was just another one of those things you try to control to try to feel better. It may not work, but you might as well keep trying.

Leroy Sievers

6:23 AM ET | 07-19-2006 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

On the Other Side

I had an amazing experience the other night and I'm still trying to make sense of it all. A friend of mine is an EMT on the local volunteer rescue squad. She invited me to ride along one night. Now, I've spent a lot of time riding with police and fire units, but I had never ridden with an ambulance crew.

The first call was a man who'd had a stroke a few days earlier and whose blood sugar was dangerously low. But some dextrose or glucose — I'm not sure which it was — brought him around almost immediately.

The second call of the night was a woman who was clearly in distress. She was nauseous and dizzy and my friend was worried that she was having a heart attack. She was in the back of her house in a room too small for the gurney, so she had to be carried out on a stretcher. I ended up helping to carry her. And the whole time I was thinking, here I am, carrying a woman who is nowhere near as sick as I am supposed to be, out to an ambulance.

We took her, by chance, to the ER where I was first treated back in December. That's where I went when I was having symptoms of the brain tumor, although we didn't know that at the time. It was so strange being back there. I felt that I had somehow switched sides. I was hanging out with the other EMTs, the nurses and doctors. For them, it was just another night on the job; they were talking about vacations and other normal stuff. But then I would look into the cubicles and see the patients, the looks on their faces and on the faces of their loved ones. Looks of sheer terror, but also that confusion when you realize you have lost control of your life. It was weird to be on the outside looking in.

And then across the ER, I saw a familiar face. The doctor who had treated me that first night. The doctor who told me I had a brain tumor. I went up to reintroduce myself. I figured that with the number of patients he must see, he would not remember me. But to my surprise, he did. He said that he had wondered what had happened to me. He explained that ER doctors see people come through and then they go off somewhere and no one in the ER ever knows what happens to them.

When I last saw him, I had a brain tumor and had been given six months to live. I'm sure he was surprised to see me. We had a great talk. I told him what was happening with me. I don't quite know how to explain why that conversation meant so much to me, but it did.

When the shift was over, it was a hot Washington night, so I drove home with the windows open and the music blasting. It all was sort of overwhelming, being back in the ER, seeing the patients and the looks on their faces, and being, in their eyes, on the other side, one of the people who was supposed to help them. It was almost too much to make sense of. But I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Leroy Sievers

7:14 AM ET | 07-18-2006 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Commentary: You Never Leave the Room

Laurie Singer and Leroy Sievers. Courtesy of Leroy Sievers

The following essay is from the NPR My Cancer weekly podcast:

We all like to joke that it's "all about me." And to a great degree, the My Cancer project is mostly about me. I'm the one with cancer, after all. But that doesn't even come close to the reality of all this. I'm not the only victim.

For twenty years, Laurie Singer, also a journalist, and I have lived together. And all those years, she has waited and worried while I went off to cover some war somewhere. These days, she waits and worries while I fight another war, not in some far-off desert or jungle, but in a hospital. In the chemo room.

The room is crowded, hardly a space for family members or friends to hang out. When you go there, you want to be supportive. Your life has changed too. In Leroy's case, life was chugging along at warp speed. He was in his dream job at Nightline.

Then a routine colonoscopy almost five years ago sucked the air right out of our world.

Maybe you've seen "the look." I don't think the doctors and nurses mean to have it. They certainly don't practice it in the mirror in the morning. But it seeps through the layers of their eyes. A mixture of dread, sadness and distress — and it happens in a flash. I saw it on the nurse who summoned me to the room where Leroy was resting, post-colonoscopy.

A few minutes later, the doctor carried in vivid images of the cancerous tumor that will haunt Leroy for the rest of his life. It would have to come out — a major resectioning of his colon. And along with it, lots of lymph nodes to biopsy. This is the way they think they can tell if the cancer has spread. The nodes were clean. No chemo ordered. Go home and heal. Have a good life.

Until you're sitting in a restaurant one night, as we were a few years later, when I noticed Leroy's face was drooping. The face of cancer was staring back at me. Leroy had MRIs in the ER and we saw "the look" again. This time, it came from the doctor who read the tests.

Then it was brain surgery — one tumor gone, but CT scans revealed more tumors. There were new doctors. A cancer center and a road map to the chemo room.

This is a place that sets medicine back to the Dark Ages. The medicine they pump into the patients is better than ever, but it's the way they present it that boggles the mind. A big room filled with old recliners, t-stands with IV bags hanging, pumps ticking away as the drops of poison pass through the yards of clear plastic tubing. The conversations among the folks forced to come here vary from "What do you have?" to "How far have you come to get it?" The skin tones of the patients speak louder than any of their answers. And those of us who come to give our support, we do our best not to look around the room. At the same time, it's hard to look at the person we've come with, because it's hard to imagine that this is really happening to us.

In Leroy's case, he looks like he should be anywhere but in a room full of cancer patients. He sticks out, and it's not because he's 6 feet 5. His skin is pink and healthy, the chemo hasn't taken away his hair, he hasn't lost weight. He's the anti-chemo poster boy. But there he is, with that damn needle in his arm, sitting there for hours waiting for that last drop of poison to drip into his blood stream.

We've made many trips to the chemo room now. Sometimes I leave and walk the brick-lined streets of Baltimore, Stop at a bakery where they make some great cookies that have a huge chocolate drop on top — a Leroy favorite. The only good thing about being on chemo? Cookies with big chocolate drops on top move to the top of the food pyramid!

But the room and the image of him sitting there never leaves my mind. I can walk those streets, people-watch and see the world moving on. But my world is back in that room where Leroy is fighting with every healthy cell in his body to live.

There's not a song on the iPod that can drown out that image, not a chapter in the best book that can create an escape route. Even on the other side of chemo, you never leave that room.

-- Laurie Singer

Leroy Sievers

7:09 AM ET | 07-17-2006 | permalink | comments (19) | e-mail post

In This Together

A woman named Kathryn recently wrote in. She lost her partner, father and brother to cancer. And she said a couple of things that are well worth sharing. I've written before that I don't feel pressure to go climb Mt. Everest or anything like that. I just want to enjoy life — normal life — with its ups and downs. And the key to that is my friends. I can't thank them enough for all that they have done for me since I was diagnosed. And maybe I owe the most to those with whom I have conversations where cancer never comes up. That may be their greatest gift to me.

Kathryn and many others of you have come to realize the same thing. She wrote:

"I've also come to realize how much my enjoyment of leisure activities was really in the company I kept, not the activity itself."

I also want to thank all of my friends for being patient with me — they may not even realize they are. "How are you feeling?" "How about now?" "You still OK?" Those are the obvious questions. We get them a lot. There are really no other questions to ask. But sometimes that just gets so annoying. I get frustrated with them sometimes and I know that I show it, even though I try not to.

I have to stop and remind myself that those questions are the right ones and that they are asking out of genuine concern. Because they feel helpless. There's not a lot more they can do. And sometimes that desire and that need to help can be overpowering. Again, I want to quote Kathryn's e-mail and the message she wanted to send to all of us who have this disease:

"Please let your loved ones help you and don't feel guilty when they do. We cannot take away this disease, so let us do what we can to help enhance the quality of your lives, and by doing so, enhance ours."

So, to all of my friends and to all of you out there who are fighting this disease along with your loved ones, thank you. Like it or not, we're all in this together.

Leroy Sievers

6:24 AM ET | 07-17-2006 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

Sometimes All You Can Do Is Laugh

There are times in all of this that you just have to laugh. Because some of the things that happen really are funny. When I went into the ER last December and they found the brain tumor, it was a pretty bleak time. I was sitting there, feeling like I had been hit with a two-by-four.

They always bring you something to drink in a hospital. They're actually very persistent. And always with a straw. So a nice man brought me some ginger ale.

I tried to take a drink through the straw and got nothing. I panicked. My first thought was, "This is the brain tumor. I can't make suction. That must be one of the symptoms! Why haven't I heard of this? Why didn't they warn me?"

Well the straw was split. A big hole in it. That gave us the first laugh in a long evening. So for those of you who are worried, not being able to drink through a straw is not a symptom of a brain tumor.

I've said before that I'm a big guy. But there are a lot of people my size out there. It's taken hospitals a while to realize that. When I had the first operation five years ago, I had an extension in my bed and I was given the largest hospital gown they had. I never even tried the slippers.

But the thing I remember most about that is when I was in the OR right before the operation. They were already pumping drugs into me, and I was getting pretty groggy. I was sitting on the operating table, and there was a tiny nurse — she couldn't have been much over five feet — standing in front of me.

She said that she was there to catch me if I fell. Through my drug-induced haze, I wondered why she would need to catch me, but I was still awake enough to know that if I fell, she would be crushed.

As I started to go under, the last thing I heard was someone yell, "What are we going to do with his feet?" I was too long for the operating table. I never did find out what they did about that.

But the strangest thing by far was on the trip from a Washington hospital up to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. I had to go by ambulance — liability and all that. I was certainly mobile, so I was sitting up in the front. It was Christmas time, the party season. As we were getting on the highway, we saw a woman lying on the ground next to an SUV at the side of the beltway. Cars were whizzing by.

My ambulance crew had no choice but to stop. It turned out the woman and her husband had been at a Christmas party. There had been a lot of drinking. A woman said something to her husband, he replied and apparently, it turned into a huge argument. So on the way home, the woman, angry, declared that she was going to commit suicide by jumping out of the car on the freeway.

We were all stunned. The EMTs had no choice but to stay with her. I was thinking, "I'm the guy with the brain tumor — this is supposed to be all about me." But she was adamant. If she got back in the car, she'd jump out. It was her car and she had the keys. Everyone was shaking his head. Finally the cops arrived and we left. I have no idea what happened. I hope she's OK.

But sometimes all you can do is laugh.

Leroy Sievers

6:29 AM ET | 07-14-2006 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post

Instilling Memories

How do we want to be remembered? One woman wrote in to say that she is fighting her battle with cancer not just to live longer, but for her children. They are only 1 and 3, she wrote, and she is trying to hang on long enough to instill memories of her within them. She is fighting to be remembered, not in any particular way, just as herself. As their mother.

Her e-mail stuck with me. We all want to make our mark in the world somehow. Doesn't have to be high profile. Although if someone wants to be remembered for curing cancer, let me know — we'll all help. But most of us are not going to be famous. Our lives — or our deaths — will not be on the front pages of the newspaper. And that's just fine with me.

I've thought about what kind of mark I will have left. I'm pretty well known within the journalistic community. Lots of awards, statues on a shelf, all of that. But that's not really who I am. That's what I do. I'm afraid that I'll be remembered mostly for my laugh. It's pretty loud. OK, really loud. But I guess there are worse things to be remembered for.

It's like the old saying: The only funeral you really want to attend is the only one you can't. People always say nice things about the deceased, but the deceased never get to hear them. It's tempting to leave some sort of farewell message, but actually, I think that's a little creepy.

No, I would like to be remembered as someone who was a good friend. Someone who fought for what he believed in. Someone who spoke for those who couldn't speak for themselves. And I'd like to be remembered as being much slimmer than I really am — and with more hair.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that woman who wrote in is right. She wants her children to remember their mother. Just for who she is. I guess I would want the same thing. I would like to be remembered for who I am — the good parts and the bad parts, too. As another person who just tried to do his best. That's enough.

They say that when you die, you live on in the memories of your friends. I can't think of a better resting place.

Leroy Sievers

6:41 AM ET | 07-13-2006 | permalink | comments (18) | e-mail post

I Am Not My Disease

Getting cancer turned out to be a good career move for me. That's a joke I've told a number of times, but it does have the ring of truth to it. Because of my disease, I have this blog, the podcasts, the commentaries. And I have a unique and valuable forum to talk to all of you. I wouldn't have this if I wasn't sick.

Writing these pieces every day is an interesting experience. I love to write and I think that I do have some things to say. Actually, I've been given the opportunity to say the things that so many cancer patients have been thinking all along. A privilege and a responsibility.

But it also forces me to face my cancer every day, to think about what it has done to my life. But I refuse to let that be my only identity. I'm more than my disease.

I've had a fairly successful career as a journalist. I had the privilege of working with some of the best in the business. I was able to see and do things that very few people ever get to see and do. Running Nightline was one of the highlights of my life. But just for fun, the other day I Googled myself. Oh c'mon, we've all done that, right? And so many of the entries now have to do with cancer.

And I have probably gotten a greater response to the My Cancer project than just about anything else I have done as a journalist. I've heard from old friends with whom I had lost touch — some, for decades. I have heard from current friends. And I have heard from strangers, from all of you, whose lives have so much in common with mine.

I think I've said before that when I had cancer the first time, when I had my surgery and pretty much thought I was cured, I never liked to use the term "survivor." That wasn't who I was. I wasn't going to let the cancer take over my identity. I was too busy for that. I was doing too many things.

But now, in spite of my best efforts, I may have lost that fight. In the end, I may very well be best remembered as a cancer victim. That's strange to me. I don't think I like it very much. The cancer has changed just about everything. My life, my career, my body. But aside from that, I am still, at the core, the same person I was before. Maybe a little wiser, but the same person.

And so I guess this is the time to say something that I sometimes feel like shouting out loud. I hope I speak for all of you out there who have this disease when I say, "I am not my disease." We, all of us, are much much more than that.

Leroy Sievers

7:24 AM ET | 07-12-2006 | permalink | comments (14) | e-mail post

Good Days, Bad Days

On the bad days, I get tired. That's one of the side effects of the chemo: You just feel worn out. I try to fight it and lead as normal a life as possible. But some days, one thing — just one thing — is all I can do. One business lunch, a trip to the office, something like that. Afterwards, I'm just beat. I hate that.

I used to walk a lot. On the good days, I go down to the park along the Potomac River and walk five miles or so. Can usually do it in just a little over an hour. But on the bad days, I know I'll never make it that far. My chest feels tight; I just don't have the wind I used to. On the bad days, just walking a couple of blocks can be exhausting.

It's not sleepy tired. A nap really doesn't solve the problem. It's more just physical exhaustion. I tell myself that it's just my body, using its resources to fight the disease. I hope that's true. But there are times where I lie down for what I think will be a short nap and wake up hours later.

But it's more than just being physically tired. You get tired mentally. You get tired of fighting sometimes. Tired of telling yourself it will be OK. Tired of telling your friends that you're fine, and acting like it's true. Just tired of dealing with it all: the doctors, the shots, the pills, the cancer.

OK, so much for feeling sorry for myself. There are good days, too. Those are the days when you feel like yourself. When your body can do all the things it used to do. When the cancer's not weighing you down. Those are the days you treasure.

It's funny — the hospitals try to prepare you for all this. They give you notebooks of material, there are books and Web sites and meetings... you name it. One of the problems with the books is that they have to be written for all cancer patients. And we are not all the same. Some of you have written in to this blog talking about cancers I've never even heard of. I'm pretty sure you hadn't, either, before the diagnosis.

But we all react differently to the cancer, to the treatments. So the books will say things like "you'll be lethargic, or have plenty of energy." "You'll have no appetite, or you'll be famished." "You'll sleep most of the day, or you'll have insomnia." Sounds pretty much like life to me.

Good days and bad days — that's what our lives are made of.

Leroy Sievers

6:50 AM ET | 07-11-2006 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post

Commentary: What Are We Really Scared Of?

The following essay is from the NPR My Cancer weekly podcast:

So many people have written in to the My Cancer blog to talk about their fears. What will the next test show? Will cancer that was gone come back? Will there be more bad news? We've all been there — those dark hours in the night when it can feel like all we have is fear.

People with cancer get used to bad news. After all, they get a lot of practice. And the doctors are very good at breaking bad news. But no matter what the words are, the patient can usually tell ahead of time. It's a look the doctors get, the way they back into the bad news.

Now, you can tell yourself to expect the worst. Trouble is, with cancer, you're rarely disappointed. And let's face it, we all know when we're lying to ourselves. Even when we say we're expecting the worst, there's still a little part of us that remains hopeful, in spite of our own best efforts. This time, maybe there really will be good news... It takes a lot to beat back hope.

But what are we really scared of? Are we all scared of death? It comes for everyone. And in many cases, death brings peace. Maybe what we're really afraid of is the physical act of dying. Will it be painful? Will it be slow? Will it be scary?

When I was first diagnosed, I was terribly afraid. I couldn't really explain what I was scared of. The unknown probably. I just know that I was very, very frightened.

But now I think my fears are different.

Now I worry about my loved ones, how they will do after I'm gone. I fear that I am being tested by this disease, but that I may not learn the right lessons. And yes, I'm afraid that my death, when it comes, will be painful — and not just for me. Maybe the biggest difference for people with cancer is that we have so much time to think about our deaths.

I listen to the radio in the morning for the weather and traffic mostly. And every once in a while I'll hear the traffic reporter say that there's been a fatal accident. Some people probably react angrily — another delay, late for work. But that's truly a tragedy. Some man or woman got up, had coffee, read the newspaper, got dressed, left for work. And never made it. No time to think about it. No blogs or podcasts about their thoughts.

But cancer patients live with the spectre of their own deaths always hovering nearby. Maybe time diminishes the fears a little bit. Maybe after living with them so long, those fears lose their power. I hope so, for my sake, and for the sake of all of you who have talked about your fears, and those of you who haven't.

I guess in the end, maybe there really isn't anything that we should fear. It's going to be okay. Really.

Leroy Sievers

7:12 AM ET | 07-10-2006 | permalink | comments (16) | e-mail post

Living Life to the Fullest

I want to thank all of you who have written in with your own stories, and with words of hope and encouragement. A couple of e-mails have stood out in my mind. There was one from a woman who lost her mother to cancer. She remembers that feeling of time — time slipping away, a time limit on life — that is so much a part of the world of cancer.

She said that she and her husband did something unique. They figured out how many weeks it would be until they turned 90. She ordered that number of marbles, and every week, she and her husband move one marble from a vase to a dish.

I have to admit that when I first read that, I thought it was a horrible idea. It was clock-watching taken to the extreme. Just counting down the days and weeks until you die. But then she said that the two of them take that moment as an opportunity to pause and ask if they have lived that week to the best of their abilities. They ask each other what they have done to enjoy that time together.

I think that's brilliant. We all say that we want to live life to the fullest, to make the most of every day we have. But that's not always easy to do. We can get lost in the rush of everyday life, work, schedules, appointments, and all the things that conspire to eat up our days. But this couple takes that one moment each week to stop, take a deep breath, and ask themselves how they have lived. To me, that's not morbid, that's a reaffirmation of life.

I wear a bracelet made up of beads. By coincidence, the number of beads is the same as the number of months that I have been given to live. As each month passes, I look at those beads, and now I'm going to ask myself the same question that woman posed? have I lived life to the best of my ability? Have I tried to make a difference? Have I tried to make this a better world?

I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the bracelet when I pass that last month. Throw it in the ocean? Start the countdown over again? Get a new one? Or just laugh, take a deep breath, and enjoy that day, and the next one, and the one after that?

I don't feel like the clock is running out for me. The prognoses that doctors give you are notoriously vague. I'm pretty sure that the cancer is going to kill me at some point. But whenever that time comes, whether it's weeks or months or hopefully years, well, I hope that when I ask myself that question one last time: "Have I lived my life to the fullest?" I hope that my answer will be yes.

Leroy Sievers

7:07 AM ET | 07-10-2006 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

Shattered Illusions

We're not victims. I might have used that word before, but reading all of your e-mails, it's clear that we — and by "we," I mean people with cancer and our loved ones — we are much more than that. I've talked before about how strange it is to have cancer, but not show it. One woman wrote in with something that stuck with me. She, too, said she doesn't look like a cancer patient. She wrote, "In this world, I can pretend to be normal and healthy. In the world of hospitals, those illusions are shattered."

I know exactly what she means. When I sit in the chemo waiting area, I wonder what people think when they pass by. "Is he a patient? Family member? He doesn't look sick." But then I realize that there are subtle clues, or not so subtle ones, that I now recognize in an instant in other patients. If you've had blood taken, somewhere — an arm, a hand — you'll have a little bit of cotton covered by tape. If you're having scans or some sort of procedure, you'll have a wristband with a bar code on it. Makes you feel a little like an item in a grocery store checkout. Those are all reminders to us, and to others, of just why we're there. I can spot a cancer patient across a room now. I wonder if they see the same thing when they look at me.

There's a very subtle contest that goes on in hospitals. I'm not sure that "contest" is the right word, but I don't know how else to describe it. Who's worse off? Or, if you're a cup half-full kind of person, who's better off? You can see it in the eyes of other patients and their families. They size up other patients pretty quickly, and then look away just as quickly. Is that person better, or worse off, than my patient?

Now, if you're a visitor to the hospital, you've probably done the same thing. Maybe you feel pity, maybe relief, maybe sorrow. But until you've been a contestant, it doesn't really mean much. When you see that pity, that relief, that sorrow, in the eyes of people looking at you, then it becomes painful.

You want to scream, "I'm OK!" "I'm not that sick!" "I'll get better!" I got pretty good at the game myself. As you are wheeled around the corridors of the hospital, on your way to this test or that one, you pass a lot of people. There's a lot of waiting in hospitals — it's called "hospital time." That MRI scheduled for noon? You'll be lucky to be in there by 4:00. And a lot of the time, you're just parked in the hallways to wait.

Shortly after my brain surgery, I was on a gurney on my way to some sort of test. My bandage was off, and the scar and the line of staples were there in plain sight. As I was wheeled down a corridor, I passed two women sitting together, clearly waiting for a patient.

As I rolled past these two women, I saw their eyes. They saw my head, reacted, their eyes wider for an instant, and then they looked away. I could almost feel their relief. "Thank God he's not ours" is what I saw in their faces. And I probably do the same thing, too, although with a little more understanding of what I'm seeing. But almost everyone looks away quickly, like they have been caught looking at a dirty magazine. You don't want to stare.

But when you realize that the pity, the sorrow, is directed at you, it hurts. It's just another sign that you've crossed the line into another world.

I was always used to feeling the pity, not receiving it.

Leroy Sievers

6:47 AM ET | 07- 7-2006 | permalink | comments (10) | e-mail post

The Little Pleasures

It's all about the attitude. Sometimes in the chemo waiting room — not a happy place at the best of times — I can tell who's given up. You can see it in their faces, in their body language, even in their skin color. I don't blame them. God knows there have been days where I've felt like that. But I think that if you really do give up, then it's over.

Not that a good attitude is enough to cure you. It's not. But there is a sense among cancer patients that the disease is somehow sensitive to things like attitude. If you fight, then you have a better chance of winning.

Now I haven't given up. And I hope that my cancer cells die a slow and painful death. I want them to suffer. I hope they can sense that somehow. They deserve no mercy.

But what else can you do to better your odds? A lot of people talk about diet. No more red meat. Lots of raw foods or vegetables. One man wrote in to suggest that I eat a lot more soy. Beans, milk, and so on. While I appreciate his advice, (even he seemed less than enthusiastic about the taste of those things) I don't think I'm going to follow it.

I do exercise. I try to walk five miles several times a week. I do Tai Chi, which to my surprise, is less about being calm and all that, and more about beating people up. I didn't know that before I started taking classes.

But I'm not going to change my diet. Eating well is one of life's great pleasures. A great bottle of wine. A nice meal. A great big greasy cheeseburger. I'm not willing to give that up. Maybe it would be better for me healthwise if I did, but I'm not willing to give up any more of my life to the cancer. That's where I draw the line.

If someone told me that I would live another month if I never had a hot fudge sundae again, well, you can probably guess what my decision would be. Cancer takes so much away from all of us, but we have to hold on to the little pleasures. Because, let's face it, when you don't feel well because of the chemo and you're depressed about the future and you just want to scream, well, a hot fudge sundae or a cheeseburger or whatever your favorite food vice may be — those things can go a long way towards cheering you up. And they're also a reminder that our lives do go on. That we haven't lost everything.

I found that when I felt really nauseous from the chemo, chocolate helped calm my stomach. Okay, confession time. I'm a major chocaholic, so maybe I just used that as an excuse. But whatever the reason, I felt better.

So my advice is go ahead, indulge yourself. For those of you who are friends or loved ones of cancer patients, every once in a while, get them something that maybe you don't think they should have. They'll love you for it. And yes, I think I will have fries with that.

Leroy Sievers

6:44 AM ET | 07- 6-2006 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

Reassessing Your Place in the Universe

"A thief and a murderer."

That's how one reader described his cancer. And he's right. The "murderer" part is obvious, but as another writer noted, we're all terminal. It's the "thief" part that may be the most painful. Cancer steals parts of our lives that we'll never get back.

One man wrote in using a false name. He was worried about the impact of his diagnosis on his job. That's easy to understand. When I was diagnosed last December, I was in the middle of some serious job-hunting. At each interview, I would be totally honest about my situation. At the time, I really didn't have much choice. One-quarter of my head had been shaved for the operation to remove my brain tumor and I had a line of shiny staples on the side of my head. Sorta tough to ignore.

Everyone was very kind in saying that the cancer wasn't an issue, and I appreciated that. At the same time, I'm sure that it was an issue. I'm not sure, if our positions had been reversed, that I would have hired me. After all, how would they know whether I could physically do the job? Would I be absent a lot? Would I be too sick to work? Would they have to fill the job again in the near future? No one could, or would, ever ask those questions out loud, but I can't believe that they weren't thinking them. And I don't blame them.

The theft of my career, or at least part of it, was very real. For most of my life, I've gone into crisis situations that are physically and mentally demanding. That's pretty much a thing of the past. I don't expect to go back to Iraq any time soon, lugging my chemo drugs in a little khaki bag. That's just not going to happen. So the cancer has stolen that part of my work.

And even if I didn't go on that kind of trip anymore, I always liked to tell myself that I still could. But now my world has narrowed. The adventures that so defined me are pretty much a thing of the past. And yes, I resent that.

Cancer also steals our control over our own lives. I — like many others, I'm sure — used to consider myself the master of my own destiny. No longer. Now there are nurses and doctors and technicians, and they all have a lot to say about how I live my life. And while I resist the effects as much as I can, the drugs, too, have a way of controlling my life.

But maybe I was too arrogant in thinking that I was in control. A cancer diagnosis certainly makes you think about and ask the big questions. And whether you find those answers through religion or meditation or any number of other ways, this disease really does make you reassess your place in the universe.

So yes, I do resent what cancer has stolen from me, but it hasn't been entirely a one-way street. I'm not sure that it has made me a better person, but I certainly hope so. And if I have learned the lessons that are out there, if I make better use of however much time I have left, if I can use my experiences to make the lives of others in my situation better, then I think it's a fair trade.

Leroy Sievers

6:21 AM ET | 07- 5-2006 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

Living to Fight Another Day

"You're very courageous."

I've heard that a fair amount recently. It's nice to hear, but I don't think it's really true. Friends have said they think that I am courageous for speaking out about having cancer. For not giving up. For laughing about it sometimes.

It doesn't take a lot of courage to have a disease and fight it. You don't have much choice. Giving up is really not an option. So you just do the best you can to continue to fight, to live to fight another day.

But I do know something about courage. In covering too many wars, I've seen courage under fire, the type of courage that the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan have to find within themselves every day. Sometimes in a firefight, it takes all the courage you can muster just to move a few feet while someone is shooting at you. That's one type of courage.

The people down on the Gulf Coast, some still living in the ruins of their lives, have a different kind of courage. Sometimes just trying to live a normal life is the bravest thing you can do. Just getting up and facing another day can take everything you've got. Some people crack under that strain.

There's also the type of courage that compels someone to do the right thing, in spite of the consequences. Not a lot of that kind of courage in Washington these days.

There's plenty of courage to be seen every day in the war on cancer. There are the doctors and nurses who use all of their knowledge, experience and skills to fight to save their patients, when they know that they will lose many of them. And yet they find the courage to come in the next day and get into the fight again.

There is the quiet courage shown by people keeping a lonely vigil at the bedside of a loved one who's sick. It takes real courage to somehow find a smile to comfort them, when deep inside you just want to cry.

And it takes courage not to turn away from people in need, whatever the reason.

I think that real courage may mean doing the right thing when you have a choice. When doing the right thing isn't the easy thing. When it's possible to run or hide or close your eyes. That's courage. It's in all of us. Some of us will never be tested, but others are tested every day.

So no, I don't think that I'm all that courageous. I'm just trying to stay alive another day.

Leroy Sievers

7:02 AM ET | 07- 3-2006 | permalink | comments (14) | e-mail post

Commentary: Quality vs. Quantity

The following essay is from the NPR My Cancer weekly podcast:

It's probably the toughest decision a cancer patient has to make. It's a question that most people don't ever expect to face — I know I didn't. And it really cuts to the heart of who we are and how we want to live. The question is: Quality vs. quantity... of life?

The treatments for cancer are not pleasant, to put it mildly. Surgery? That may be the easiest — you have it done, you heal, you move on. Not a lot of fun, but at least you can sort of see an end to the discomfort.

Radiation? I haven't had it, but it doesn't sound like much fun either.

And chemo? Definitely not fun. Debilitating, depressing, exhausting? and more. But you go through it because you hope that, if it doesn't destroy the cancer, then at least it will hold it at bay and buy you more time. And that's really what doctors are trying to do — buy you more time. There's usually very little talk of curing you of cancer — at least there wasn't for me. The only time it really came up was when my doctors told me not to expect a cure.

Instead, they want to do everything they can to prolong your life. Increasingly, cancer is treated as a chronic disease, like diabetes. Something you have, but that you can also live with. And that all sounds fine the first time you hear it. Even if there is no cure, this approach holds out the promise of longer life — maybe a much longer life. The hope is that cancer does not have to be a death sentence.

But after you've taken the drugs, or had the radiation, it may not be so attractive.

So it comes down to that one basic question: Would you rather have quality of life, or quantity? Is it worth it to live longer, even if the treatments that make that possible also make you miserable? Or would you rather have a better quality of life, even if that means a shorter life? I never expected to face a dilemma like that.

It's actually pretty simple though. There are two choices. Undergo treatment, feel miserable, but live another six months. (Is that time so precious that it's worth any amount of discomfort?) Or don't take the treatment, feel pretty good for a few months, but know that untreated, the cancer will probably kill you sooner.

If you had given me those choices before my diagnosis, I, like most people, would probably have said that living longer is the top priority. No question. Easy answer. But now I'm not so sure. I'm in no rush to die, believe me. But another few months of feeling bad — is that really the way I want to live? Is it worth it?

I don't know. And it's more complicated than just what I want. Is it fair to my friends and loved ones? Do I owe it to them to try to live as long as possible, no matter what the quality of that life is? Or is it more cruel to make them suffer through those painful treatments along with me? Is it selfish? Or is it my decision alone?

I go back and forth on this. Stopping treatment seems like a slow form of suicide. At the same time, having just taken a short break from chemo, the idea of not feeling sick is very appealing. But even if it means a shorter life?

I don't know how to answer this one. I hope that I won't actually have to make that decision any time soon, but I know that I will have to make it at some point. I wonder, when that time comes, if I will be wise enough to make the right choice.

Leroy Sievers

6:31 AM ET | 07- 3-2006 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post