Two To Go

This morning's sunrise, taken by Ten

I’m nearly across the finish line. Today and tomorrow are my last days of radiation (for now anyway). IF this protoning has worked (in freezing the growth of the monster on my spine. I've a 90-95% chance of success), I should be good—safe from losing all mobility and feeling from the tits down—for ten years.

A decade from now, if I last that long, I’ll be 73.

Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive.
~ Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Don't you have a religion?" Dorolow asked Horza.

"Yes," he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. "My survival.”
~ Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

Life tries to crush her, but only succeeded in making a diamond.
~ John Green

I cannot defeat cancer. Nobody defeats cancer. There is no winning or losing. There is no surviving or not surviving.

There are only coin flips: heads or tails; benign or malignant; weight loss or bloating; morphine or oxycodone; extreme rescue efforts or Do Not Resuscitate; live or die.
~ Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

While my zoo full of tumors is benign, the lot of them are most def not harmless, slight or merciful. AT ALL. They’re assholes from the lowest depths of Dante’s Inferno. I can’t conquer neurofibromatosis type 2 BUT I will continue to fight it, learn to live with my losses and have some damn fun too.

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
~ John Banville, The Infinities

I’ve certainly got that covered.

Proton radiation ends tomorrow—the battle continues.