Breathing

I saw a talk by someone from Stanford Hospital on diagnosing lung cancer a few weeks ago and the statistics are dismal. Most people have nodules in their lungs that will show up as false positives on scans. The window where a possible tumor on a scan is large enough that it's worth risking a biopsy and where you catch the tumor early enough is very small. By the time a patient has symptoms, it is too late, the cancer has already metastasized and spread to other parts of the body. Across all forms of lung cancer, median survival time is less than seven months after diagnosis.

I really have to agree with this statement. My dad was recently diagnosed with stage 3 myeloma at 56 years old and is fighting his way back from what looked like the end. He has a 30% chance of surviving beyond 5 years. Hope is difficult, you hope that he will be the exception, the one that defies all scientific data. But the numbers say eventually the cancer will beat him.

What can you do? Does life stop? Even my father says life has to go on, I am 400 miles away doing my job, paying my bills and he's just trying to keep going.

Over the past few months we've discovered that my mother has inoperable cancer.

I know the feeling. As do many others, I'm afraid.

These types always make me reconsider the value of the work I am doing. Because it seems so inconsequential to be writing code when so many significant problems in the world remain unsolved.

i'm leaving this comment here and not on his blog because, while true, its not very graceful.

death is a part of life for all of us, and yet we cant process it. i don't blame him.

My mother (age 67) got breast cancer in 2007. She did all of the treatment for it and was basically free of it 12-18 months later.

Fuck yea.