Cancer Redux

Well, folks. I now officially can say that I have someone in my family who is living with cancer. My stepfather was diagnosed yesterday with prostate cancer. It's a very different feeling than what I've always gone through with friends and friends' parents when they were diagnosed, or died of the disease. It really, truly does hit to the core. The positive, if there is one, is that it seems (at least on biopsy) to be moderate stage, and not advanced. The prospects for a long-term survival are pretty good, but we won't know for sure until further testing and staging is done. I want to use all of my medical knowledge and tell myself that all the studies and papers say that if you are going to get a cancer, this is a good one to have because it's generally a slow progressing disease, etc. But there is no "good" cancer. Every case is different. And Mike has a strong family history, with his father dying this year of the disease. So while I am very optimistic that it's not going to be a catastophic thing, at least short-term, I still have in the back of my head the 10-25 percent that don't fare so well, regardless of the staging. It truly chills me to the bone to think that five years from now....well, you know.....

Adding some irony to the situation is how I was so haunted by the new U2 song "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own", which is about a son losing his father to cancer. Now it makes the song even closer to my heart.