A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum...
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| Evening, Rome, April 2013, looking over the Roman Forum. In the distance with the chariots a flutter is the monument to Victor Emmanuel III, a large marble and stone structure that Sartre considered a mountain of lard, and it is. |
Well, the stress test is over and after a three hour stint in the cardiac unit getting my tests, being injected with radiation juices, and generally sitting around, I completed the test. At one point, I asked the nurse doing my scans why she wasn't leaving the room, which is common during C-Scans and MRI, thinking naively that radiation was in the room and she should protect herself. She looked at me and smiled, saying, "You are the radioactive source in the room." Then it occurred to me that while I was not glowing like a lightening bug on a summer night, my veins certainly were.
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| Fileted Fish, Chiang Mai Fish Market, January 2013 |
That night, I got a call from the Doc in charge of my potential kidney therapy at Beth Israel, and he informed me they found a significant heart or artery problem that I would have to receive treatment for that before I would be considered for the IL-2 treatments, because the IL-2 treatments are so strenuous for both the heart and the lungs.
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| View toward the Colosseum, April 2013. |
There you go, another kick in the nuts.
Well, as you get older and get somewhat accustomed to life kicking you in the nuts, I now have to think back to all my symptoms and know that it wasn't my small amount of cancer that was the problem - fatigue, lack of breathe, and general malaise, but heart disease. And, as far as heart disease is concerned, it could have potentially extinguished this bright light I consider my life, much quicker and with greater stealth than my kidney cancer.
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| Buddhist saying tacked onto a tree at a Temple, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2013 |
So, without the periodic checks to find the cancer, which was waving a big ham-handed wave in the center of my chest, saying, "hey, the problem is over here..." the docs would not have uncovered a potential greater foe that has been building up over a lifetime. So, happy to have cancer because in the end, it may be what saved me from the express check-out lane at the local Life-Mart and to continue shopping for the goods and pleasures of this modest existent on planet earth.
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| Arch of Titus, 82A.D. one of my favorite monuments, depicting the temporal success of Titus bringing back the wealth of Jerusalem after his conquest of the holy city in 70 A.D. I may build a small arch when this episode is over. |
