Ah, today is Easter Sunday. There will be fewer eggs hidden in gardens this year. And those that are found will be dull white or brown—who can afford eggs or the imported dye to color them…both marked up by 140% to cover tariffs? Chocolate bunnies, too, may be hard to find because the costs to import fine Swiss chocolate may have risen to astronomical heights. Easter dresses, made of cloth woven in China and Vietnam and Cambodia, will be available only to the children of billionaires and members of Congress. Churches around the U.S. will be surveilled by teams from DHS and ICE today. Those teams will target random church-going people with and without paperwork that proves their rights to be in this country. Professors, factory workers, farm hands, career military officers, postal carriers, and Democratic governors will be detained and shipped to Salvador super-prisons. Left-leaning dogs and Social Democratic horses will be rounded up like DEI-supporting college presidents and shipped to Guantánamo. Christian soldiers hired by right-wing Baptist preachers will march onward to capture Greenland and Canada and the Panama Canal. What a day is this Easter Sunday!
+++
My oncologist called me yesterday afternoon to change the schedule for beginning my new chemotherapy regimen. Tomorrow I will go in for labs; chemo infusion will begin on Wednesday. I could tell from the caller-ID that she was in her office, which is closed on the weekends. I imagine she was catching up from the previous week, when her APRN (who shares her patient load) was off on vacation. Ever since she became my oncologist, about six years ago, I have been reassured by her frequent personal involvement in dealing with my treatment and in interactions with me. Though she has a large staff who handle most aspects of the treatment she plans—including scheduling, administering chemo drugs, taking and recording vitals, communicating with patients, etc.—she stays directly involved with her patients. When she discovered the recurrence of lung cancer about sixteen months ago, she and her APRN gave me their cell phone numbers. Only one other doctor, the surgeon who performed the lobectomy to remove my original tumor, has ever shared a cell number with me. I have confidence in her for all those reasons and because of her extensive training, experience, and involvement in and publication of research findings. But, of course, positive patient ratings (hers are quite good) do not guarantee competence. At some point, though, a patient must “go with his gut.” Her honesty with me helped me make the determination that her recommendation by my former primary care doctor was a good one. When my cancer recurred, and after her extensive review of all test results, she told me a cure was unlikely; her objective would be to lengthen my life span. One of the oncologists I met at M.D. Anderson said as much when he told me there were few remaining options beyond the standard treatments she had used. The clinical trial physician’s comments about the experimental treatment to be administered in the study suggested the same. I took the MDA doctors’ comments as confirmation that my oncologist is competent. Considering the fact that my oncologist suggested I consider exploring clinical trials at MDA, I feel comfortable that she is giving me good advice.
Despite the likelihood that cancer probably will kill me at some point in the future (the timing of which no one is willing to guess), I might instead be run over by a Tesla truck or struck by an experimental aircraft or die of starvation in a Salvadoran prison or succumb to some other accident or disease or deadly misfortune beforehand. I will try to avoid spending time in the vicinity of Tesla trucks and experimental aircraft, of course. And I hope to evade would-be captors who desire to send me to El Salvador. I would rather not contract yet another disease, either; nor allow cancer to slowly consume what’s left of my shrinking body.
Given the annoying but tolerable discomfort so far of chemo side-effects and the likelihood that other treatments will cause similar unpleasantness, I think at some point I will decide whether the treatment or the disease is more difficult. I’m sure I’ve written before about that likelihood. It seems always to be at the back of my mind…when it’s not right in front. I knew going into the clinical trial that chances were that it would have no positive impact on me. Yet, now that the particular trial is no longer an option for me, I feel that my ineligibility has taken away a remote—but real—opportunity to defeat the odds. My thoughts are irrational and at odds with one another.
+++
My computer screen, without being asked, is telling me to expect rain in about 3 hours. About that time, you will be expected to enter the Christian Nationalist Church of Holy Abundance and Perpetual Financial Salvation. So, at 9:30 a.m. have your domestic servants provide you with umbrellas, raincoats, galoshes, and a Bloody Mary or two to protect you from the drizzle and the drivel. But I shall stay indoors while the rain pours from the sky; no need for protective gear for me. I shall engage in my own manner of contemplation.
+++
This entire post probably replicates things I have written previously. I will try not to continue this monotonous repetition of boring and repetitious writing. I’m sure I have said that before, too. I wish I could just let it alone; and go on as if nothing worthy of worry were on my mind. And I can. It’s just a matter of mental discipline. Perhaps if I spent more time playing Words with Friends or attempting to solve crossword puzzles or learning to identify species of trees by their leaves or bark…
