Cancer Diaries Are Back— Let's Call This Evening's "Season 2, Episode 1"

This is a tough one for me to write, but I feel like I should. Yesterday was my 77th birthday. I’m from a generation that believed we would never live past 30… so I’ve done OK. A month ago I had some new symptoms that I told my doctor about and she asked me to come into the hospital for some tests. Long story short— today was my first day of chemo for pancreatic cancer… 3 Fridays a month and a week off for good behavior, no a week off for recovery. So… I have a feeling Saturdays are going to be quiet at DWT. We’ll see how much writing I can get done… or if my brain even works enough to think.

Pancreatic cancer used to be a death sentence but they’ve made a lot of progress in the last few years and it’s not as deadly as it used to be. The idea is to shrink the tumor so that the surgeon can operate. It takes about a year, give or take. My regular doctor put a team together for me for this ordeal. She’s a hematologist so this kind of cancer isn’t her thing but she’s keeping an eye on how things progress. Meeting her was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me.

One of the new doctors I met, said something pretty scary, noting how old I am, how much I’ve been through and how harsh this would be, asking if I was sure I really wanted to do it. The alternative to doing it? 6 months of life. So, yeah, here we go again. I don’t mean to whine; I’m thankful— for the medical progressive and for Medicare, which pays for all this without batting an eyelid.

A few days ago— so no meds let alone chemo— when I discovered that everything tastes super-salty. I discovered it when I bit into a mandarin orange! Ugghhh. Wednesday night though, I ate at Baroo, my favorite restaurant in L.A. The food is so sublime and delicate and flavorful that I was able to taste everything. I hope that lasts, since I recall last time I had chemo, a decade ago, I couldn’t bear to eat at all.

I’ll keep writing as long as I can, but less on the weekends. Last time, I wrote a running series called the cancer diaries and maybe I’ll do that again, if I think there's anything interesting to share beyond an old guy moaning about his health.