If you ever wondered what it is like when you are diagnosed with cancer, you might want to visit this page...

There you will find an amazing video collection of the best roller coasters in the U.S. The “Tetsu” actually had me feeling seasick. Imagine a roller coaster where you hang from the track and lay flat like Superman flying through the air. It looks amazing and it is so strange to be flipping through the air and not be able to see the track or anticipate what is coming. Awesome!

At any rate, the whole point here is to let you know what my life is like right now. Ups. Downs. Corkscrews. Inversions. And the ever present risk of barfing.

I met with a surgeon this morning who reviewed my latest PET scans with me. “No one wants to have a nodule on their lung,” she said, “But if you are going to have one, you want to have one that looks like yours. It is a single nodule. It is on the right side of the right lung, close to the ribs under your arm. Surgically it will be very easy to get to...a chip shot really. And don’t give up hope. I have a patient who had melanoma on her lung and I’ve continued to see her for ten years. Also, your lungs are beautiful. I can tell you have never smoked.”

So surgery is scheduled in two weeks. It will require a three day stay in the hospital. Not bad.

Maybe the best news of all? She asked that I not take any more Interferon until after the surgery. Wow! Two whole weeks of feeling great!

There will be other therapies. Perhaps another round of radiation and some other drugs, but I’ll know more about that after I talk to my oncologist next week. So that is the latest.

In the mean time, I promise not to try to get off of the ride until I know for sure that it is coming to a full and complete stop. And if the amusement park gods are kind, that will be a long time away in the future.

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