radioactive dawn #4

Songbirds begin around 4:30 AM, and even if dawn is still an hour away I awake smiling, life is incomparable.

My daughter drives me to Oakwood Cancer Center and I badger her to take a picture. Why? Hey if we were going to a big sporting game or something we would want pictures. I’m not playing a game nor is my team we are 'fighting' for my life … and when we win I want pictures.

As my head is secured by my mask to prevent movement, the linear accelerator purrs to life.

I lay and watch green laser beams appear slicing through the air to align and target me with high energy x-rays to blast away at the lung cancer metastasis that has spread to my brain. 

As the machinery moves around me, before me, above me, beside me, on my right, on my left I find myself falling into the prayer of St. Patrick’s Breastplate and the growing hope to fight to win this.

It’s over in seconds and the room lightens as the ceiling panels transform to a luminous virtual window creating the appearance of looking up while lying under a spreading flowered tree into a blue sky full of tomorrows.

Please do not get me wrong I am no cockeyed optimist. This is the scariest challenge I have ever faced.

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Henry David Thoreau

Patrick Leer

Health Activist:

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/