All The World's A Stage

"Julien asked what Stage it was, and I told him Stage I, is that right?"

That was little A last night describing a conversation in 4th grade about your humble author. I'm probably like a lot of you when it comes to understanding cancer-speak. I know there are 4 "Stages" and the higher the number, the worse it is.When my mom died, it was from Stage 4 cancer. So Stage 4 = death sentence, right?

Wrong. The Stage does describe whether the cancer has spread from its source to other parts of the body. In my case, I had Stage 0 or carcinoma in situ in 2005. Adele likes to say I didn't have "real" cancer back then, and the National Cancer Institute agrees: Carcinoma in situ (CIS; abnormal cells are present but have not spread to neighboring tissue; although not cancer, CIS may become cancer and is sometimes called preinvasive cancer) . Unfortunately, the life insurance companies disagree, but that's a topic for another posting. My cancer was contained within a polyp.There was no evidence it had even penetrated the wall of my colon, let alone broken through and spread to any other organs. Nearly six years later, it popped up in my pelvis. Nobody knows for sure how that happened. I never even had another polyp until 2010, and the one we found back in March was not cancerous. So again, I'm not picturing a tumor blowing through the sidewall of my colon scattering cancer dust everywhere. One theory is that lots of cancers create rogue cells, and that our natural immune systems are usually smart enough, or the rogue cells dumb enough, to wipe them out long before they can take up residence somewhere in your body. Mine were smarter than that. Too smart for my own good.

So what Stage does that make me? I guess that's technically Stage 4 - colon cancer has been found someplace other than in or adjacent to my colon. Dr. Z doesn't talk in stages or numbers of any kind, we just talk about how we're going to treat me, how we're going to make me better. I've met several people who are long-term Stage 4 survivors, leading cancer free lives, some dealing with the long-term effects of their treatment, but no longer dealing with cancer. I've read countless stories of people with Stage 4 cancers: colon, testicular, breast, you name it, who have survived and thrived and who are on this Earth in part to remind all of us that this is a very personalized disease. You fight hard, ask questions, seek options, eat right, exercise, pray. And then you wake up the next day and do it all again.

Rob, who knows a thing or two about fighting cancer, said to me yesterday "you play for time." So true. Not in the "I have x months left so I'm going to climb this mountain or jump out of that airplane." I'll leave that shit to Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. I'm playing for the time when some researcher at MD Anderson, Mayo, Sloan Kettering, or some Med School in Mumbai  figures out the magic bullet. The day will come when we get our Polio/Diptheria/Cancer vaccine, or when we drink the cocktail that kills all the rogue cells dead like Raid for tumors. It may be 5 years, 10 years, 25 years from now. Until then, I'll get treated, be cancer free for what I hope will be a long, long time, and if necessary, get treated again. Zap me, poison me, cut stuff out - I can take it. We, my amazing family and I, can take it.

So JuJu, your friends' dad has Stage 4 Colon Cancer. But don't worry. He's going to be OK.