Thanks to the alert reader who reminded me I have posted on my website blog at www.drmoeanderson.com a few days this month and failed to copy the post to blogger.com. This is where I started my quest to blog everyday and this is where it shall end in 3 days. So you’ll see several blogs posted on the same day in my attempt to rectify that error. If only it was that easy to erase the other mistakes from my past. This weekend I had a great time with my oldest son and his family. Shortly after they left today, my stomach became a knot of painful confusion. I tried to lie down, drink water, and drink Sprite, not necessarily in that order. Nothing worked and the pain grew into a menacing twin of the agony I felt the night I went to ER and was diagnosed with cancer. I’ve told everyone who asks that I believe I’m going to be cured and I’ll do whatever it takes to eliminate all evidence of disease from my liver…but surgery again??? That didn’t cross my mind until today and I gotta tell you my answer right now is anything but that. I never felt pain from the cancer. It was all from the surgery and chemo side effects. I still can’t do so much of what I once considered routine. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me; I want you to understand the incredible strength of will it takes to have surgery after surgery for skin grafts or a cleft palate or whatever. Insert sigh here.
Today a friend emailed me to say one of my recent blogs sucked. The language was nicer but that’s the gist of it. I told her I’m not looking for a grade. I’m trying to convince myself I can still write every day. Good, bad, short, long or ugly, just do it no matter how badly I feel. That’s how it’s always been. Some of my published columns for a major daily were C- and some were A+ out of the ball park but I wrote 500 plus and didn’t miss a deadline. I did it by any means necessary from dawn to lunch breaks at my practice to the twilight hours after helping my kids with their homework. I wrote around and through my crazy life. Now, I write despite my life. If perchance the time comes that I must again choose between want I want to do and what I must do, I’m hoping these 29 days and counting will serve notice to my battered spirit that I’m not a quitter. At least, that’s my minor hope. My major hope is that I’ll never have to make that choice at all.
