time is getting short

Linda, I am sorry to hear of a turn in health. Please take care of yourself. I am very tired and not posting much. I will know more in a week.

Thanks, Sea. Doing the best I can. Totally understand and empathize with the fatigue, and won't expect long posts but appreciate your checking in when you can. Hope you can give yourself a break!

Pet scans are done. I am so tired I fell sound asleep during the scan....out cold....very comfortable. I saw the infusion room where they do the PRRT and saw a patient who appears to have just completed a treatment. She looked like she had been run over by a truck. I should hear by tuesday as to scheduling and if I still qualify. I probably will be too tired to enjoy the grandkids, and my wife is having to complete some of the tents for the weekend....

Best wishes. Just drive a golf cart to visit the tent if you're able. I'm sure it'll be a big hit.

I just received a little bit of bad news.  I thought I was going to get the first PRRT injection within two weeks. I have been  told it has been postponed until June 27th.  They are swamped as this procedure is extending people's lives, but this will be the longest month in my life.   It will be an outpatient and nobody can get near me   for five days.........my wife will probably like that because under her breath I believe she feels I have been radioactive for our marriage.  the problem is no sando shot until after the 27th.....those shots have been keeping me alive.....so now it is a race to the finish.  I was watching Real Sports with Bryan Gumble on HBO, and he was talking about how the NFL settlement agreement is denying coverage on everything because they figure those ex NFL are going to die before payout......here I just think people are swamping the facilities.  The Nuclear medicine lady said they took her space for pet scans and they are having to double up in the control booth.  I have been blessed with the best care, and when I did not want to go into debt for 50k to go to Germany, brussels, or Switzerland...because the fda gave approval...if I pass next week at least I was given a fighting chance.

I'm sorry to hear this. But fuck the cost... it's just money. I can't give it away fast enough.

Keep calling to see if there is an opening.

I want no special treatment. There are people in line in front of me. It is important that I maintain dignity and calm, because calling and asking for a time which is sooner, only puts more demand on an overwhelmed system. It is with great confidence that I believe in providence and if this is meant to happen, it will, and if it is meant that I fade away this next month....so be it. Pretty scary weight loss. I went from 240 to 220 in less than three months. This is always the thing that the docs look at. When they did a debulking of the lung tumors the Pulmonary Doc who is pretty cool, gives me two hard and quick pushes on my chest, and then announces that I will have no problem with the surgery. I had meat and muscle then. If he did it now, it may have resulted in no surgery. I cannot wait for the grandkids as the oldest is now emailing me and is so excited to come out and visit this weekend. The fishing has been great as the river is rising and the channel cat become very active. Some Walleye caught last weekend and hope the kids will catch some fish.

So sorry for the disappointment, Sea. Good thing you have that faith in providence, I guess. Far better man than I'll ever be.

MPRESSION: Abnormal gallium-68 Dotatate PET-CT scan, as described above, demonstrating evidence of widespread skeletal metastatic disease involving the liver and skeleton, as well as additional findings in the region of the left mainstem bronchus, corresponding to a previously noted soft tissue mass on CT. Splenomegaly is noted, without any suspicious areas of increased tracer uptake within the spleen. See above discussion.

I am declining by leaps and bounds and the bone mets have become quite painful as I have serious doubts that I will make June 27th. However, the good news is the PRRT is extremely effective with bone mets. 95% success in knocking them out which immediately takes a load off the kidneys and liver. Life is a series of probabilities from the day you are born. I have gotten a rare slow cancer where the probabilities said I had a six percent chance of living ten years after the first lung tumor and I am being told that PRRT is extremely effective on bone mets.........but nobody predicts the future on mere probabilities because like being alive today, some things being improbable do not change the outcome which may be in variance. Oh, well.....I am enjoying the granddaughters and they want to play poker......I may have created a monster.

2seaoat wrote:I want no special treatment.  There are people in line in front of me.  It is important that I maintain dignity and calm, because calling and asking for a time which is sooner, only puts more demand on an overwhelmed system.  It is with great confidence that I believe in providence and if this is meant to happen, it will, and if it is meant that I fade away this next month....so be it.  Pretty scary weight loss.  I went from 240 to 220 in less than three months.  This is always the thing that the docs look at.  When they did a debulking of the lung tumors the Pulmonary Doc who is pretty cool, gives me two hard and quick pushes on my chest, and then announces that I will have no problem with the surgery.  I had meat and muscle then.  If he did it now, it may have resulted in no surgery.  I cannot wait for the grandkids as the oldest is now emailing me and is so excited to come out and visit this weekend.  The fishing has been great as the river is rising and the channel cat become very active.  Some Walleye caught last weekend and hope the kids will catch some fish.

I don't get this providence? If it was meant to happen and God's will why did you seek treatment? God let you have cancer and go through all this because why?

We all have to die. How and when is basically beyond our control. That which we cannot control becomes all powerful. Providence is the belief that destiny is predetermined, or at least narrowed as to probabilities. I simply believe we have very little control over destiny.

You rarely get what you don't ask for.

2seaoat wrote:We all have to die.  How and when is basically beyond our control.  That which we cannot control becomes all powerful.  Providence is the belief that destiny is predetermined, or at least narrowed as to probabilities.  I simply believe we have very little control over destiny.

If when were beyond our control, you would have died long ago, wouldn't you say?

PkrBum wrote:You rarely get what you don't ask for.

What does that mean?

I have no belief in the existence of destiny nor of any higher controlling power, especially one supposedly involved in my little penny ante dust-speck life.  That said, the last thing I'd want to do is disabuse a dying man of one iota of his faith and belief, even if I could.

Asking questions does not equal disabuse.

Totally comfortable with my belief system and critics who do not believe in a higher power. The only thing which makes me uncomfortable are people who espouse that they have answers in regard to faith and reality. I find them usually not very intelligent in their approach to religion and faith. It is like they think they have the answer and they will read scripture and lecture you.....it does make them feel good, but in regards to better understanding the unknown, they simply become comical. I adhere to the principles in Matthew 6 which clearly warns to beware of the hypocrite. This makes folks feel better to have answers when they simply do not have a clue what came before their lives and what comes after. There is no empirical evidence, and that is why intelligent people often rebuke people who spew nonsense in regard to religion. At a higher plane, it becomes much more challenging and requires real thought, but you lose both groups when you head down that path. In any regard, I have never met that human who can tell me about what came before and what comes after death.

Actually, I thought it was a logical question if you believe in predestination, however; since now you say people who don't aren't very intelligent simply amazes me. We do know what came before and what existed before we came along. We have evidence man existed only 300,000 years ago. Yet we are to believe the horrible atrocities of this world are predestined? You think intelligent people believe that? Seriously?

As a footnote, Hawkings as most w/ superior intelligence were atheists. That should tell you something.

Einstein's God is not most people's god (Religious views of Albert Einstein). Einstein could see from the description of the universe above, that the universe is one thing. The separation of you and me from the universe is an illusion. Einstein subscribed to Spinoza's version of God (Squashed Philosophers - Spinoza - Ethics) For Spinoza, all is God.

Matthew six arrives at the same place.

Well, you just picked one scripture and decided that was your belief and discarded all the others. Not sure how that equates into any truths? The question of providence or predestination was the discussion and that just doesn't have any veracity at all looking at the real world.

Matthew 6 at its core was the protestant reformation, but there is no ambivalence that we all are connected to a higher power and it is not the hypocrites preaching that they have the answer that there is a god or that there is no god. Spinoza had it right. Matthew 6 has it right. The bible is like a specification sheet on an automobile. People will tell you that the radio button is the central theme of those specifications, others would suggest that the car does not exist because it is fantasy and faith, I simply say that some versus are more important than others and that Matthew six has guided me since I was a freshman in high school. I disposed of the bible thumpers and agnostics with equal ease understanding that I do not fully understand the connections which tie us all together in something more than random chance. In regard to intelligence, you completely reversed what I had stated.

I'm not disputing their may be a higher power. I don't know. I am disputing predestination. There is no logic in that belief.

I don't know either. Nobody does. The mysteries of the universe remain locked away from all human beings.