Update

Well I've been trying to rush to the end of the school year without faltering. I think I made it to the end without the kids without fainting or just not being able to get up one morning. I have three more days and a few meetings to do, and I am pretty sure I can get through them.

I recorded it, and have saved it back for a couple weeks until I felt emotionally strong enough to handle watching "Farrah's Story." I watched it tonight (Memorial Day) and I am very blessed. She was diagnosed with stage IV at her first diagnosis. I am blessed to have been diagnosed with probably stage II.

It was frightful to see how much suffering she has gone through in order to try and continue living. Clearly the time has come where treatment is no longer worth the hassle. Interestingly, my motto, was expressed similarly by her, but is summed up as "All days on this side of the dirt are good." As a movie star she said it more nicely.

It's nice to have the financial where-with-all to go anywhere in the world to get treatments. I'll have to make do with American treatments, all of which are FDA approved and therefore 10 years behind the rest of the world. With luck, I'll never have to find out what comes after what I've already had. Cancer doesn't care who you are or what kind of money you have, or how beautiful you might be/have been. It doesn't let you keep your dignity, your hair, or all your parts. Suddenly things you thought you'd take to your gave, precede you in death, and you hope you're not going to be right behind them.

I've always hoped that I'd never be able to say, "What was that?" and just wake up dead. No big transitional thing... but I think cancer probably robs you of that kind of opportunity. My grandma went a pretty awful way. It took her 10 awful, horrendous days to die. Farrah has managed to drag it out for two years and to have some nice times in-between the awful stuff. Ultimately though, her thoughts and feelings are those of lots and lots of those afflicted with cancer and those who hope they have overcome it.

I hope she can just take lots and lots of morphine and surrender. It can be a gentle slide, I think. It appears she's still struggling to stay on this side of the veil. Doesn't seem like she is likely to have many more days with us though. In one hour's time, 5 people will die of some kind of cancer, and in that same hour 30 more people will hear the words, "You have cancer." At least I think that is what Oprah quoted.

Just as I've been stuck by lightning and lived to tell about it, I hope to be able to live a long time to tell the story of being struck by cancer and surviving it. I bought a lotto ticket tonight, but I'd rather live the "life" lotto. So would Farrah.

And as I write this bit of emotional stuff, a student that has repeatedly called me and called me and called me -- before I got sick, while I was in treatment and then.....a pause and some quiet. I sat behind him at graduation on Friday night, and was surprised to feel so much bile inside me against him. I know who it is. I can't prove it. I can't do anything but change my cell number to stop it. I thought at graduation, "He's maturing and growing up and maybe isn't so bad anymore." But tonight as the phone rings and he "stalks" me with his adolescent pranks, I know that he is really, through-and-through, just a plain old asshole. I've never "encouraged" him by responding back. I've always just hung up. Tonight I told him where I thought he'd reside upon his release from this life. While I pray for compassion for myself, there is a great part of me that hopes his Karma kicks his ass!