Lies, dang lies, and scary statistics you wish were lies...

Did you know that one in four people die from cancer?  Seriously, look it up: 

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=915

OK, where was I?  Yes, I got a phone call.  My doctor wanted me to come in to see him, and how soon could I make it in?  Well I was out of state, so it could not be until the next week...  I asked what the problem was and, well, you know it isn't good when the doctor doesn't want to tell you over the phone...

Anyway my doctor finally relented (it probably had something to do with the begging and groveling on my part) and he shared with me that the good news was that my globulin levels which had originally been flagged appeared OK on the new test.  However, it looked like I had leukemia... 

Hmmm. 

What the...?

PANIC!

OK, I really wasn't demonstrably that dramatic.  I once had been quite sick (turned out to be pneumonia).  After work I went to an after-hours clinic and before the doctor saw me the nurse came in to take my vitals...  When the doctor finally did come in, she was obviously shaken by something...  Her first words were something like "I don't care what you came in here for, but your blood pressure is so high you have to go to the emergency room right now and they will put you on an IV with BP medication, or else you will have a stroke."  My exact response was that "I don't do drama.  I am not going to the ER tonight, but before the end of the week I promise to be under the care of a cardiologist."   

But, at least this time, after hearing of possible leukemia, I wasn't very calm and cool - at least on the inside...

Basically the test found that my white blood cell count was high - 21,000.  Not terribly scary high by leukemia standards (where white blood cell counts can be in the hundreds of thousands - or more - with advanced disease), but the count was well enough off the end of the normal scale that the lab's protocol called for a pathologist to take a look under the microscope, and sure enough, they spotted suspected leukemia cells... 

So, fast forward to me returning home a few days early from my trip and seeing first my doctor, then an Oncologist he referred me to.  Nice guy, took a look at my reports and said presumptive diagnosis is Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, and not to worry, this is something that I will live for a long time, but, there are just a  few more tests to run.  I wait two weeks for these tests to come back, time which I filled with research.  I learned that this is really not one homogeneous disease but a rather maddeningly heterogeneous disease with outcomes that depend on a number of differences at the molecular level...

What's the obstacle to being open to all the possibilities in your life...?

In the middle of January I was away from home attending a conference where Benjamin Zander was one of our featured speakers.  He started out his talk by asking us to envision what it is that prevented each of us from being open to all of the possibilities in our lives.  One word popped into my head, a word that I would say has dominated my thoughts for as long as I can remember. 

Fear.

Fear of spiders.  Fear of the dark.  Fear of heights.  Fear of losing financial security.  Fear of losing the love of my wife and children. Fear of being found out to be not nearly good enough.  Fear of loss – of anything and everything.  More fear of spiders.

But just a day before Benjamin Zander's talk, I got a lot more to fear than just arachnids.  I had a follow-up phone call with my doctor and he was not happy about something...  A month earlier I had a routine set of blood tests performed as part of an application for additional life insurance through my employer.  Right before Christmas my blood chemistry test had come back with an unusually low globulin level and I received in effect a "Dear John" letter from the insurance company.  Now, I wasn't about to take this laying down...  I am an A type personality, or so I have been told by others who I really feel are not nearly interested enough in understanding and impacting the things around them.  I mean, don’t you just hate the word “whatever” when it is uttered as the world’s shortest description of a philosophy?  If the fate of the world were left to people like that we would still be living in caves, or never have been interested in mastering fire…  I like sushi, but steak tartar? 

Where was I?  Oh, yes, I am a type A personality and decided that I would simply have to understand this.  So I went to my primary doctor just after the start of the year and asked him to run some tests to understand what all of this meant.  The follow up call I received right before Benjamin Zander's talk changed my little corner of the world, more than a little, but fortunately less than a lot up to now ...