I needed a pick me up today, and reading the responses here has helped. THANK YOU AND KEEP EM COMING!
Since it's become a process to leave my home, a friend stopped by to help me to yesterday's appointment. I woke up at 4am this morning to a thoughtful, but emotional email from her about how she nearly had a breakdown hearing me talk with my doctor so frankly about the tumors, the size and location and, in a roundabout way, what to expect at the end. She said I had a crushed look on my face, but I expected the news and nothing of what he said felt new. Don't know why she didn't talk about it with me for the six or so hours she stayed once we came back from the appointment.
Regardless, it was better to have her there than my mom. She wouldn't be able to handle that conversation. I once tried discussing a recommendation for a lawyer and how to transfer my finances over to her once I pass and she flipped out at me for not 'thinking positive enough.' Then she pinpointed my constant pain to the amount of coffee I drink each day and I tuned out of the conversation.
She's not taking this well.
So getting back to the doctor's message if this pill fails -
On the plus side: a whole lot of morphine.
On the negative side: a whole lot of morphine, death.
There are other chemos we could try, but with even lesser probabilities of good outcomes. Unless a new experimental treatment comes out that I can reasonably travel to, this treatment will be my last stand. I don't have the energy to endure this punishment anymore. And, if there's the possibility of an afterlife and some spirit realm, I'd like to follow Stacey Dash for a day or two.
So I took the first pill last night. It was the very definition of a non-event. I opened this $10,000 bottle of cheap plastic, surveyed 30 or so cheap looking pills, picked the one I thought Steve Jobs would find the nicest looking, and downed it with some coffee. I have felt no different. My sleep is still haphazard with painful mornings.
I'm still imagining shrinking testicles, prunes and Al Sharpton.