Well, that was fucking depressing. The Life and Times of ovarian cancer's most famous victim—Gilda Radner. Of course it was on TV and of course I had to watch it, just to remind myself how utterly desperate the situation is.

Sometimes it's hard to remember I'm sick and possibly dying. Like last week, I felt great. I had things to worry about other than me, and my hair hadn't fallen out, so it was easy to forget all that. Now, I look in the mirror, and its there for all the world to see, shrieking out 'cancer!'. It's humbling for certain. Who knows, maybe this is gods' wrath for hubris?

However, the one thing that I think separates me from her, is I truly am not a fatalistic person most of the time. I let myself wallow in it every now and then, but it's a state of mind I generally don't inhabit. And the one thing I do have in common with her is, I do have a sense of humor, and with that comes perspective. I can laugh about becoming bald, because frankly its not that big a deal. In the immortal words of the Red Alien from the 8th Dimension "so what, big deal." It does worry me though, that so far all the role models for cancer that I have in my head so far were not survivors.

I had an interesting conversation with an old friend about 2 months ago. He is a student of human nature, and one of his 'studies' is what does it take to make a survivor? A person that is successful in life, that despite adversity overcomes the obstacles. One thing he noticed is that survivors rarely come in pairs; usually they end up being attached to non-survivors or more frequently as singles. Not that this was a very scientific study, but R deemed me a survivor before I was diagnosed, and I intend to take him seriously. Though I think that Fate has stepped into my life. What if the dot com failures hadn't killed the job market before I graduated? What if 9/11 hadn't happened and the whole world hadn't gone crazy, making me stick to the job just a little tighter? What if Scott hadn't passed on, leaving a place for me to go without losing my benefits? I have insurance that is going to make it possible for me to live, I have a job in my new field, and I have an incredible group of people to work with, and the most precious of all, friends and family who care and love me. I am more than thrice blessed: I cannot believe how lucky I really am.

I did get some very very good news today. The CA125 is a test that is given for cancer; it detects the byproducts of tumors in the bloodstream. On March 28th my CA125 level was 2713, on
April 5 its was 3514 (from the biopsy, so the higher level). But, on Saturday, after one chemo only, it had dropped to 301. That's three-oh-one. It was so astounding to the nurse that she called to tell me. So, the drugs are working, the drugs are working.

So, I'm in tears again today, but it's just tears of joy and thankfulness.