Had we but world enough, and time

Prince Richard: (King Henry is) here. He'll get no satisfaction out of me. He isn't going to see me beg.

Prince Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool… as if the way one fell down mattered.

Prince Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.

Jay Lake got the terminal diagnosis. Several metastasis sites, multiple tumors. So right now, as he says, the course of treatment is to take Regorafenib until that stops working (if it starts working), and then palliative care. There's the chance for stage one clinical trials. There's a reason why those are the last course of action.

Excuse me while I go outside and yell at the Universe for its unfairness.

Back. I think I just used up my yearly quota of "fucks" in all its varients. The Universe didn't much care.

Jay, thanks for your courage sharing your journey and your stories. I just wanted to say that early on because there are better things to talk about and better people you'll talk about them with later.

These days it may not seem all that strange, but when my grandfather had his first cancer diagnosis we talked about it in whispers. The more people say, "this is my life and death with cancer and you don't get to co-opt it" the less our culture thinks that cancer is embarrassing. The less we think people with cancer should vanish from society and stop reminding us of our mortality. The more we are able to connect to each other and share our real lives, the less these things seem strange and terrifying. It really wasn't all that long ago doctors wouldn't even tell their patients if they had a diagnosis of cancer.

For me, I will mourn for Jay Lake when he is dead. And not a moment earlier. As the Irish saying goes, "There's time enough for resting when we're in the ground, there's to much work to do before then." Or was it "too much drinking to do". Or maybe it was Warren Zevon.

Also, our culture loves to talk about the survivors. The brave souls who never gave up and "beat" cancer, as if all was required was a firm conviction. Like the link shared earlier, the dirty secret is people still die from cancer. In fact, most of them do.