Personal Update

I think I will start this by quoting something I first wrote in 1998 =

“There aint no reboot, rewind, or start game over. This is the only run through you get, so get it right, and do it now, because you have no guarantee the game will continue.

You may feel that this is only the first inning, period, quarter, or half, but I tell you it is the bottom of the ninth, the end of the third, the last kick of the fourth, and the end of the second half, and you have no guarantee of getting off of the bench again.
If you have to play in pain, do it. If you wait for the pain to leave, the final buzzer, bell, or whistle may go before you get back in the game, so don’t wait.

Make the statement you want to make, and play the game as you want to play it. Don’t wait for the rules to change = they won’t, unless you change them yourself.

Lest you think I am saying what I don’’t do, I tell you I am playing the game I chose, and have made my own rules long ago. Things I don’t want to do, I ignore. Face, appearances, respect of others, all of the things that we run our lives by = they are not for my rule book, unless they fit with what I feel my life should be. I do what I do, because I must to be me. The only person whose respect I have to work at keeping, is me. If I do what I can live happily with, I am doing alright. I respect my own value set more than most others, and if I meet mine, I don’t need to worry about meeting those of others.”

I have put off writing this post for several reasons. At first it was because I was not ready to share with the world what was going on with my life yet, as I had not fully absorbed what it meant to me, and how I was going to deal with it. Another reason I did not post, was that I did not have enough information myself yet about anything/everything, and would be unable to answer any of the questions that I knew would come.

Since I now have enough of an information set I think it is time to post what is transpiring.

I was diagnosed with lung cancer in May. To be specific, Type 3A lung cancer. The designation indicates that I have cancer in one lung, it has spread outside the lung to some of the lymph nodes, but not metastasized = I have had a total bone scan, a CT scan of my abdomen and head, and a bronchoscopy with ultrasound and a biopsy thrown in. The lung and nymph nodes are the only locations there is cancer.

The prognosis, based on the statistics for Type 3A, and how I am presenting the symptoms is good. The median survival rate for a diagnosis of Type 3A is 15 months (that is the point at which 50% of those diagnosed will have died). The 5 year survival rate is 23%.

Because of the way I am presenting the symptoms = very good general fitness, still good lung function despite 56 years of smoking (I quit August 23, 2010), no weight loss, and no difficulty swallowing = the oncologist says I will be in the 23%. He also said that he thought he could cure this, not just drive it into remission, and that is the premise he is treating me on.

I know this blog has been badly neglected and very infrequently posted to for some time. I could make excuses about various things happening that made it impossible, but the fact is, life just sort of got in the way, and the garden got looked to first.

I've had my bell rung again with this latest development, and will listen up a little better to what I preach in the above quote.

As a result, the garden is no longer going to be the sole focus of my life. I will still garden in a big way, but it's going to have to fend for itself a lot more than it has in the past. I will expand the variety of things I grow, but reduce the amounts of some of the crops at the same time.

The orchard will see better maintenance, so I don't end up taking 3/4 of the crop off with a pruning that should have been done two years earlier. Thinning will take place on time for a change, watering will be more frequent, and there will be a lot of manure spread around the trees for a change.

The trade offs come in that I will actually go fishing, and do a little travelling for a change. Things that I have shunted aside for most of the past nine years here, in favour of spending more time in the garden, are going to get done again.

It's not that I don't still love gardening = it's just that I have been reminded that I do not have all of the time in the world, and there are still flavours of things out there that I have not sampled.

I will keep you all apprised of what is happening, as it transpires.

Strangely enough, this might also result in a lot more gardening content being posted as well, as there will be more time to do it in (I think).

As with everyone else, I have more facets to my life than gardening and this blog = I have just faced away from them for a bit too long, and will start doing at least a few of them again.

I do ask that you not let this announcement change or shade the way you interact with me. I am still the same guy, and I still plan to be around for a long time. If you think this has me thinking long about my mortality, don't = I just started crossing tomatoes, and am going to be replacing a few fruit trees that have had to be removed.

Life is the great adventure, and no adventure is complete with out days or periods where things do not go as planned, or it would be a very dull adventure.