October 17: How I Reacted to My Diagnosis

On my Facebook, I opened myself up to questions for entry fodder for this month. Here's one of them.

What was it like when you first heard your Metastatic diagnosis. How did you cope? First thoughts? First days? First month? Now? -Beth

 When I first heard the words Stage IV, it wasn't entirely a surprise, but for the wrong reasons. My primary mass was 6 centimeters in size, and I thought that size was related to stage. It can relate to stage sometimes, but not always. I assumed because the mass was big, that meant it would be Stage IV. I didn't fully understand what that meant.

I thought I was still able to be cured. I thought I'd be fine, that I just had to power through harsher treatment, more chemo, more surgery than an earlier-stage patient might. You could say that I coped with denial. I wasn't dying. That couldn't be true. I would be just fine, just you wait and see.

I argued with my oncologist. I told him to mark my words, I'd be cancer-free, I was strong enough to beat this. Bless him, he didn't argue back. He knew I'd come around sooner or later, and that it wasn't the time or place to push the issue.

I walked a very fine between calm and screaming despair, like walking a tightrope. I put on the bravest front I could muster in an effort to convince myself that I would be okay. Whenever my thoughts started to run wild on me, I brought them back under control by reciting the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's Dune.

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

Jen and I at the salon when we got our heads shaved together.

 I fully and wholeheartedly believed, thanks to the pinkwashing, that I just had to be strong enough, brave enough, tough enough to fight this and beat this thing, and I would be fine.

Coming to the realization that wasn't the case was harder.

I was still convinced I'd be fine a month later, but I was starting to think of it more as a simple, chronic, and wholly manageable disease I'd just be on medications for for the rest of my life. I was starting to achieve some inner zen though, around the time my hair started falling out and I went in to have my head shaved.

Coming to terms with my own mortality, I wrote about that back in the early days of this blog.

I've come to realize that this is essentially a chronic illness. There is no cure. I will have cancer for the rest of my life and while I want that rest of my life to be a long, long time, I'm aware that it might not be, despite everything I do.

That's kinda fucking terrifying to realize.

I've been adapting to this understanding in bits and pieces. I've skirted around and cast indirect glances, like watching a Medusa through the reflection of a shield, by coming up with a soundtrack for my funeral, and I've looked it straight on without really thinking about it and wrote my own obit. I had to ease into the acceptance of this possibility the way you ease into a too-cold pool, or a too-warm hot tub. Inch by cringing inch.

But like the pool or hot tub, once you're submerged, it no longer feels as bad as it did going in. Sometimes it's even a comfortable feeling.

I think the imagery of Medusa and the shield is the best way to describe what it was like for me to face my own mortality. I couldn't look it directly on, or I'd turn to stone. I had to look at an indirect reflection to be able to face it. Once I was able to face it, I slowly became accustomed to it.  As I became accustomed to it, it lost its power to turn me into stone. Now, I can look at it straight on and say "I'm terminal" without a rush of panic or stammering excuses.

I'm doing fine now, better than fine, actually. According to my oncologist, I'm doing great. I do attribute some of that to my ability to achieve that calm zen I felt during my time in chemotherapy, staying calm and chill and upbeat. Positive thinking won't cure my cancer but it did make the side effects less horrible overall.

October 7: My Own Milestones

Yesterday, I spoke of Milestones, from the point of view of a mother, which many women are. Not all women are, though. I'm one of them. I have no children and have never desired a child. I live my life with the thought that I would rather regret not having children than regret having one. If I ever found myself feeling like that had left a gaping emptiness in my life, I could become a Big Sister, I could foster, I could do many things to make a difference to the children who were already in existence.

But I don't have the normal milestones that most women in my position are facing. I don't have children to see off to school. I enjoy seeing my friends' children grow and experience new things with each passing year, but they're not my milestones to observe. If I don't make it to see my best friend's youngest start high school, that won't be what's going through my mind as the time comes.

Today, I have a post with a lighter tone. My milestones are pop culture. They are things I enjoy and I fully intend to be around long enough to experience them. They are the targets I aim for.

One of the first on the list is Thor 3. Rumored to be released in the year 2018, it's bringing back Tom Hiddleston as Loki, and we find out what exactly was going on at the end of Thor 2: The Dark World. I've been a Marvel fangirl for years, since the old, old days of the Outside The Lines mailing list and the CFAN website run by the late Kielle. The MCU is entertaining and enthralling, and I want to be able to make it to Thor 3, or even Avengers 3.

But that's still not too far off. It's only four more years, after all. I want more than that. I want to live to a ripe old age and thrive, keeping this beast at bay for years to come. I need another milestone. I have two for the year 2025, 11 years from now.

The first of the two is a really big if. Mars One. Not if I live that long, but rather, if the project doesn't tank, if the project timeline goes as planned, if there aren't any unexpected delays, then we'll be seeing the landing of the first humans on Mars. I want to see this for myself. When I was little, Atari was state of the art, and phones came from Ma Bell and in fleshy beige or avocado green, and had the little rotary dial. In forty years, we've come from that to a feasible, workable plan to put human beings on another planet. We've been to the moon, but no further than that. To see a different sky, to stand on a different planet, there are people selected for this right now, and set to begin training for this mission next year.

The second of the two is far more local. On July 4th, 2025, the world's largest time capsule will be opened, and it's located in Seward, Nebraska. I lived there for a few years, and it's only a 30 minute drive away. Attending it should be interesting, provided the crowd doesn't make me want to scream and go somewhere far away from that many people. If it does, I'm sure there'll be a display up somewhere with the items recovered, and I can just go to that.

That's all I've got for now, but I'm sure more milestones will crop up as time goes on. I'm really hoping that the Mars One project stays solid and on its projected timeline. That's just amazing and brilliant.

Dental Woes and Whatnot

When I was four, I contracted bacterial meningitis. To save my life, I was given some powerful antibiotics that worked, but at the cost of destroying my enamel. This resulted in yellowing teeth and getting cavities and abscesses at the drop of a hat. Not to put too fine a point on it, my teeth look like a meth user's, so my mother and I have been looking into dental implants. I've been appointment-hopping, getting consults, and it turns out I currently have an abscessed molar that needs to be taken care of before I can even begin thinking about consults for implants. Fortunately, it doesn't hurt, probably because there's nothing opposite of it to aggravate it. The molar on the top got abscessed a while before my cancer diagnosis, and that's when I got a few fun facts about me confirmed.

1) My veins are shite. It took seven tries to get an IV working, and all the other attempts resulted in my veins blowing out. As a result, I spent the next couple weeks looking like I'd been battered.

2) Locals do absolutely nothing for me. After they tried - and failed - to get an IV line going for IV sedation, they switched to locals to see if anything would work. I've not had good experience with getting locals to work, and this time was no exception. The first one did work, for all of 10 minutes. The second one just made my face numb, and had the fun perk of worsening the toothache pain to the top of the pain scale. (This crisis was ultimately resolved by admitting me into the hospital and someone there was finally able to get an IV going on me, and I was put under general anesthesia for the extraction)

This means any major dental work done on me has to be done by a place that 1) does adult IV sedation and 2) accepts Medicaid. There's a grand total of one place that fits that bill, the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. I have an appointment for a tooth extraction on the 12th of September, a few weeks before the wedding. And Jen has to drive me home since they're doing IV sedation, and she loathes driving in Omaha, especially in unfamiliar areas. This is going to be exciting.

Also, this is a teaching hospital. I think that's why the medical team was so ridculously excited to learn that I had a medical port to use instead of getting an IV in my arm. I'm sure a lot of that is because it's easier, but I'm not so sure there wasn't an element of "SHINY TECHNOLOGY!" going on there too. Most people coming in for dental work aren't going to have that.

I'm just glad that this tooth hasn't started hurting and even more that it didn't start hurting during chemo, which is hard on the teeth too. It would have been harder to get dental work done while undergoing chemo. There are false teeth of near-denture quality that can be used to give a cosmetic appearance of having nice teeth at a fraction of the cost of dentures, so I'm going to try that out for the wedding pics. You can't eat with them on, and I'm not sure how comfortable they'd be overall, but I've seen good reviews. There's a reason I smile with my mouth closed in pictures. I laugh too much to be able to remember to keep my mouth closed, which is why my mom's helping me get implants, or if I'm not a good candidate, proper dentures. It would be nice to be done with this tooth business.

In the meantime, I have other things in the works. YSC will be featuring me in an article they're going to publish on October 13, the National Breast Cancer Awareness Day. I'll post a link to it when it goes live. I'm also being interviewed by the local newspaper for an article about Wish Upon a Wedding. The journalist doing the story wants to be able to publish it on the Sunday of the wedding, September 28. I'll post a link to that article as well.

Another metster who has a blog of her own is going to be running guest articles for the month of October, and I've submitted an entry of my own to Telling Knots. I plan to try to post every day in the month of October with information about metastatic breast cancer to fight against the pinkwashing of Pinktober. I'm also using a breeding sim site I'm active on (Wajas) as a way to spread awareness. I have two customs with the Metavivor ribbon colors that I've bred for pups that I'll be selling for game-site currency in October, with a big sales post promoting them and featuring information and links about metastatic breast cancer. To help drum up more awareness, people can buy a pup for only 40k, which is stupidly cheap in site currency, to represent the 40,000 people who die each year from metastatic breast cancer if they post in the thread sharing something that they learned about MBC, forcing them to read the information provided, and also if they pledge to spread MBC awareness to counter the pinkwashing.

One of the pups I bred for myself, fairly identical to how her parents look.

I'm not going to be thrown under the bus, or swept under the rug, and forgotten about in the wave of Pink, Hope, and Cure this October. I'm gonna make some noise.

We need to make some noise

Early-stage breast cancer and metastatic breast cancer are two different beasts. Treatment and information between the two can vary greatly. The American Cancer Society has a pamphlet for breast cancer, just one. And it only relates to early-stage.

When I was in for my mammogram - my first one, after I already had BC under the age of 40 - there was only information about early stage, early detection. It's hard to find anything about metastatic breast cancer anywhere unless the site is about metastatic breast cancer to start.

When general cancer sites do have something that mentions metastatic breast cancer, it's usually very bare-bones. Not a whole lot of detail, compared to early stage.

Metastatic breast cancer gets ignored in research and funding, and that's the stage that kills people.

40% of people with breast cancer are metastatic. That number is too damn high.

10% of them were metastatic from the time of diagnosis, like me.

30% of them were treated for early stage breast cancer, usually quite aggressively to boot. Mastectomy,  radiation, chemotherapy, hormone drugs. And they still develop metastasis.

Hiding from the metastatic beast won't make it go away. Pretending it's not an issue won't keep people safe. We need to make noise, like the people with AIDS back in the '80s who were fighting to get research for treatment and maybe a cure. I don't know how to do that, though. If I did, I'd be doing it.

All I know how to do is write. So I have this blog, and I'm working on a book, a memoir, to try to get the word out. If anyone has any more ideas, please feel free to share them.

We've got to be the squeaky wheel if we want the grease.

Progress Report 3/4/14

"I'm melting! I'm melting! Oh, what a world, what a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?"

If my tumor could talk, that's what it'd be saying.

My onc's progress report from last week is finally on my patient portal website, and I went from mass of 6cm and a significant swelling and thickness in my left armpit at diagnosis at the start of my DD Taxol Dec 10th, to this report on the 4th before my infusion that day:

"L breast was 6cm firm mass at 12-1 o'clock position this is now less defined ~ 2-3cm w/ overlying redness firmness extends into L axilla. L axilla mass now~ not present"

I have another CT Scan coming up at the end of the month to get a better picture and to also check up on my liver mets. (More of their demonberry juice, yum). The overlying redness is residual from when it exploded in a hissyfit after my first infusion and ruptured through the skin in two places. It's healed over now finally.

I'm also amused because in the psychiatry portion of the progress report, he describes me as "alert and oriented times three." I know what it means, but it just sounds amusing, like it goes hand in hand with his teasing me on how bubbly and on the ball I am at my appointments.

A friend commented to me about the Wizard of Oz reference on IRC:
Friend: ...now I'm almost disappointed that your tumor didn't have its own flying monkeys.
Me: That's what the mets is! "Fly! Fly, my pretties!" and off it went to my liver where it started making like it was the scarecrow, but in a surprising fanfiction plot twist, the monkeys got their asses kicked.

Busy!

Oh, man. Trying to pack and do chemo in the same week is exhausting. It's like this mountain of work, and I feel like I've only traveled a couple feet up, but damn, them's some hard feet. I did get some new things for the house (a socket adapter for the laundry room light bulb, a curtain rod for the bathroom, a box cutter, a couple ultra-absorbent dish mats, a new sheet/pillowcase set, some more water pitcher filters, dish soap, dishwasher soap, paper towels, plastic storage bins I can use for packing and later for storage, 9v batteries for the smoke detectors, and a new outlet surge protector for the bedroom since the one I have now is getting old and plugs are falling out.) and moved a few things from the apartment to there, mostly working on really fragile breakables that I don't want jostled around any more than absolutely necessary.

But that means numerous trips up and down 2 flights of stairs and that's steadily becoming more difficult. I can't be out of here fast enough at this rate.

I won't have to do the packing all by my lonesome - Mom's coming up from Texas to start helping on the 17th or thereabouts. I just have some stuff that I'd rather take care of myself before she gets here. And the place is so messy it's hard to know where to start with packing. I should clean up.

I need to get more things over there tomorrow, and I have all of next week to do that. But I can only do a little at a time, not the way I used to, so I won't be able to get as much done as I would have in the past, and that frustrates me. Especially because the biggest part slowing me down is navigating those stairs multiple times a day in the process. I am so done with those stairs. They weren't that much of a problem for me before chemo, even though I'd bitch and moan about them from time to time, but I could handle it. It's getting harder the more fatigued I become.

Jen's parents are giving us their old washer and dryer, along with their old fridge. So we'll have two fridges, one'll be kept in the garage for extra space so we can buy in bulk a bit easier. Not sure when we'll be getting those in, but that will also help, no more lugging loads of laundry up and down the stairs and trips to the laundromat.

Tomorrow, I suspect I'm going to feel even more like a giant, beat-up bruise than I normally do, and I'm still planning to try to make myself Do Things. We'll see how that goes.

*bell rings* Round Four!

I start Round 4 of Taxol today. I have 9 more infusions left to go counting the one I get today. (If I said 12 elsewhere, it's because I can't math). I'm going to push for surgery afterward, especially to have the tumor examined to make sure it's still ER/PR+ and Her2- before we begin hormonal therapy.

I'm also going to talk about NOT getting Tamofaxin, because I've read that it interacts poorly with Prozac, which I need to keep my brain from going loopy-depressed. I've battled chronic depression all my life.

Kohl's is still using the stupid Pink Elephant campaign despite now being fully aware they are co-opting METAvivor's campaign. We're still doing Occupy #TalkPink on twitter, and I'm trying to get some other #Talks off the ground, like #TalkMets, and #TalkBlue (for male BC) and #TalkIBC (for inflammatory breast cancer). It's slow, but it seems to be picking up.

Today's a busy day. I ended up with an extra Metastatic Navigator kit from YSC, and I'm meeting with my Nurse Navigator at the cancer center today to hand the extra one over to her to pass it on to someone else who could use it.

I also will probably find out if I'm getting a house. My parents are going in on renting a place with me, my partner, and our roommate so they have a place to stay with us when they visit instead of hotels and can help take care of things around the house if I need it. We found the absolutely most perfect place ever. Cross your fingers and say your prayers that we get this place. I will cry so hard if we don't. Please let something go right.

EDIT: WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!!!!!

I'm lucky my parents are finally in a financial place in their lives to do this, and I'm doubly lucky that they accept the fact their only child is gay, and accept my partner as their own daughter. My partner's parents are pretty supportive too, although my MiL is still pretty resistant to it most of the time. She bounces back and forth. My FiL is awesome. We're damned lucky.

My partner, Jen, is slowly coming to terms with this. It scares and depresses her, and she's taking it harder overall than I am. I haven't shared this blog with her yet because I don't feel she's ready. It took me a while to get to a place where I felt ready to discuss my own mortality.

I love her dearly. She's my light and my always. We've been together seven years this January, and still going strong. The early years were the hardest, before we got a clear diagnosis for her own health problems and got her on medication which stabilized it. Her health problems fall under the medical end of psychological, along with severe anxiety disorder, so it doesn't help her in getting to where she can handle my diagnosis easily. She's getting there though, and I'm so proud of her. I'm so in love with her. I'm so lucky to have her in my life.

Kohl's contacts Metavivor!

The power of social media (and the threat of lawyers) has come shining through. Kohl's called Metavivor, and the conversation was described as "amicable". They're expressing a willingness to listen.

Keep using the #TalkPink tag, and let them know what we want. We just want to be heard. 30% of funding should go to Metastatic Breast Cancer research for the 30% of us who develop it.

It's not just women - men get breast cancer too, and a disproportionate number of them develop metastatic disease due to the lack of awareness of male breast cancer.

Metastatic breast cancer is the form that kills 40,000 people - women and men alike - each year. Yet only 2% of research funding goes toward that.

Pinkwashing has created the mindset that with early detection, we're cured. 20% of the 30% were early detections, and yet the cancer cells still managed to slip under the radar and metastasize in the body. For 10% of us, early detection failed.

More and more younger women are developing metastatic disease, and for some of us, like me, it wasn't even diagnosed until it reached Stage IV mets. Pinkwashing has created an oversaturation of awareness and a loss of understanding of the risks and dangers. Breast cancer can be cured? It's not that easy nor that certain.

Daily Living

There. Now that today's bit of morbidness is out of the way, time for something lighter. Thriving is not obsessing over dying, after all. (It is, however, geeking out over tunes, a couple of those songs which didn't seem to rhyme were actually just the English translation of the Japanese lyrics. Yes, I want anime music at my visitation. I'm too much a nerd not to have that.)

My parents are in town for a short visit, and they are too damned generous. Our bed broke a while back - the frame got pulled out of alignment and the box spring fell off and snapped. I was going to order a new bed off Overstock when my tax refund came in, but it was on sale at an even lower price than what it already was. (500 for a rather nice Serta mattress and box spring set, on sale for 400, and with free delivery that includes the delivery carrying the mattress up the stairs, taking our old one out, and setting up the new one for us.) So Mom ordered it for us, as a gift. A new comfortable bed to replace our 14 year old mattress. Hooray!

We went out yesterday to Cheddar's for a nice lunch and then hung out at their hotel for a little bit and exchanged presents. I got my mom a lovely spirit wings pink ribbon shirt, and my dad a Tough Guys Wear Pink shirt. Today, they picked us up and we went to Red Robin for lunch, and then over to GNS Vapor for me and Mom to get ourselves some more ecig juice. I had them whip me up a custom blend - chocolate and strawberries. It's delicious! Mom bought a bottle of my go-to favorite, Chocolate Candy Cane, for herself, and a new tank.

Then we hung out in the hotel a bit more today, and tomorrow I'm picking up Dad and we're going into Seward to get insurance for my car from a local company, switching away from Allstate. Suhr and Lichty are good, I've been told, and the rate they're quoting me is even better than what I'm paying Allstate right now, so that'll save me some money.

Dad gave me some more money, bless him, and I'm going to use some of that to apply to the Bryan School of Nursing. Wish me luck!

Dance Within the Flame

So. Metathriving. Why the cutesy wordplay off Metaviving, which is a cutesy wordplay in itself?

Well, for starters, I'm a writer, and I like me some cutesy wordplay, darnit.

Secondly, I've never quite liked the word surviving. If this were something with a beginning and an end, like a really bad bout of the flu, that would be one thing. But this is a new normal, my new life in Cancerland.

I'm not going to stand outside the fire just because I got relocated to a new normal.

Standing outside the fire.
Standing outside the fire.
Life is not tried, it is merely survived
If you're standing outside the fire.

Merely survived. I don't intend to merely survive this. Going through the motions of living to make it from one day to the next. Maybe some days that'll all I'll be capable of doing, and that's fine. But on the days I can do more, I intend to be more. Continue with my dreams, my goals, with living life. Not just surviving it, but thriving in it.

We call them strong,
Those who can face this world alone,
Who seem to get by on their own,
Those who will never take the fall.

We call them weak,
Who are unable to resist
The slightest chance love might exist,
And for that forsake it all.

They're so hell-bent on giving, walking a wire,
Convinced it's not living if you stand outside the fire!

In the truths that she learned

In the truths that she learned,
In times that he cried,
In the bridges he burned,
Or the way that she died.*

I don't want to die. Not ever, actually. If I could be immortal, I'd do it. But that's not a possibility. I certainly have no intention of dying anytime soon. That wasn't always the case, but it is now.

When I first was diagnosed with cancer, I thought, I can beat this. Even when I was told I had stage IV mets, I believed it possible to be "cancer-free".

So much pinkwashing.

I've come to realize that this is essentially a chronic illness. There is no cure. I will have cancer for the rest of my life and while I want that rest of my life to be a long, long time, I'm aware that it might not be, despite everything I do.

That's kinda fucking terrifying to realize.

I've been adapting to this understanding in bits and pieces. I've skirted around and cast indirect glances, like watching a Medusa through the reflection of a shield, by coming up with a soundtrack for my funeral, and I've looked it straight on without really thinking about it and wrote my own obit. I had to ease into the acceptance of this possibility the way you ease into a too-cold pool, or a too-warm hot tub. Inch by cringing inch.

But like the pool or hot tub, once you're submerged, it no longer feels as bad as it did going in. Sometimes it's even a comfortable feeling. I've decided I want portions of William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis read at my funeral, such as: Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

But I still don't wanna die anytime soon. I'd get my butt rez'ed and kicked for bailing out on a lot of people. I don't want my butt kicked, kthx. I promised I'd stay here, and stay here I intend.

But I'm starting to... realize that I've started the last three paragraphs with 'but' and I really need to stop that shit.

I'm planning my funeral, I just intend for it to be horridly dated by the time comes to use it rolls around. (Although I still plan for Queen, Stevie Nicks, and Pink Floyd to play at my funeral, because man, they're classic. The classics never go outta style.)

It's scary, but it's also liberating. "I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. When it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain."**

I was suicidal for a long time. Now, I have no desire to ever die. I didn't beat back chronic depression and lock it in a little cage to let cancer kick my ass. I'm never going to stop fighting for every minute. Realizing that I could very easily, and very quickly die from this didn't sap my strength or courage or motivation. On the contrary, it fortified it. I know there's no end to this war now. All I can do is keep from being overrun. The longer I fight, the more of the enemy I'll kill, and the longer I'll be here.

"If I'm going down, then I'm going down good. I'm going down, then I'm going down clean, I'm going down, then I'm going the prettiest broken girl you've ever seen."***

Being told you're going to die takes away the desire for it. Embracing the facts of it takes away the fear of it. Taking away the fear of it means a fuller, stronger, richer life. A stronger life means a chance for five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes more, and more.


(*Seasons of Love - RENT; **Litany Against Fear - Frank Herbert's DUNE; ***Let the Record Show - Emilie Autumn)

Hi, I'm Susanne, and I have Mets

But then, you probably already knew that. I should introduce myself, shouldn't I?

I'm 39 at the time of this writing, and at the time of my diagnosis. In exactly 2 months, I'll turn 40. I don't do anything halfway, do I? Right off the bat, mets. The m-word. I'm a permanent resident of Cancerland.

Right now, it's not bad. I might even get a shot at the coveted NED award. No Evidence of Disease. It's not quite the death sentence it used to be. Not always. Sometimes it is. Sometimes you sit in that room and you're told something out of Hollywood: "You have cancer. You have six months to live." But sometimes you even get told that and end up thumbing your nose at that prediction for years to come. Sometimes you live for years with mets. It can sometimes be managed, but it will always be there.

Metastatic breast cancer kills. There's no cute way to soften that up. The clock is ticking, but we've got a chance now for more minutes added to that clock than used to be thought possible.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes... times two... times three... times twenty. Times more.

I've got a damn good chance at that more. I know there's also a chance I'll lose. But win or lose, I'm fighting this tooth and nail every damned step of the way. I'm not going to stop fighting. Even if I should ever have to ultimately make a choice to discontinue treatment to preserve quality of life, I'm still going to fight for every single minute more that I can possibly win away from this enemy.

In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, as you know... this means war.

I'm not going to stop fighting for a moment. I have too much to live for, too much to fight for. We all do, of course. But no one's going to lose me if I have anything to say about it.

I'm realistic, but I'm not defeated. Optimistic, but not deluded. I'm digging in deep for the fight of my life, quite literally. I know this is the war that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends. There is no "cure". This war will not end in a grand finale battle of pink ribbons and quippy quotes.

(Well, no, it'll have plenty of quippy quotes, we're talking about me here. I quip like I breathe.)

I'm metastatic.

That's an ugly word.

War is an ugly word.

But it's a damned beautiful life.