Wal, I dunno, Clem.

The medical lads are offering not immunotherapy, as I had thought, but a targeted chemotherapy, something which aims at kiboshing the actual cells of cancer by kicking them right in the DNA rather than strengthening immune response against them or improving immune-system detection of them. Those wily li'l bastids! Wuss than a drunk sidewinder in a thunderstorm, Clem. Check yer boots first thing, won't you?

This comes with the usual price-tag of possible abreaction to the chemo, risks of angry dandruff and ungrammatical colon, and so on. There are a few side-effect risks, low on probability, I would really like to not dick around with, such as swelling of the lungs. I imagine I'll be able to handle all that. The protocol also involves sticking yourself (usually a fingertip) for a drop of blood each morning, which raises concerns about my precious fingertips as musical envoys. That, too, can be managed. But the real question here is paths to the future. This one might do well, or not, and if I get fed up with the medical clutter I can bail in favor of "quality of life" anytime.

There are other projects, medical and alternative, out there. There are juicers, THC gummy-bears, electronic pulsing pillows, vibration managers of all sorts, vitamin mongers and dietary pony-riders, each on a different hobby horse, barkers and shysters, gurus and masseuses, acupuncturists and holy men, holy women, pot-heads and beam-operators, Reikians and Reichians, dianeticists and herbalists. Ask anyone of them if he or she can assist in reversing cancer and they often will nod sagely.

What is refreshing about my friends at UNC Oncology is there is no mysticism involved. They'll tell you what they think they know and why they think they know it and size things up probabilistically and statistically and point to what they don't know with a kind of scientific pride in their own humility, if you see what I mean. They know where their facts come from. Not to mention their budgets and equipment are so damned fancy you immediately figger they must know what the hell they're doing. ("Oi! Is that focking nun out there again?")

On the other hand ask them about "placebo effects"--a term right out of their field of work--and you draw a blank look. Same for other border-country phenomena like NDEs and OOB experiences. The problem there is that the actual genesis of the condition might well be in one of those marginalized bins of excluded information. Every field has its edges and its limits, I suppose. One would like to think there was an off-switch on one of these various sub-panels -- the mental, the biochemical, the emotional, the spiritual, or even the Divine-- that one could grope for in the dark and reset.

Kinda like finding where that damn burr is under Thunder's saddle so he would stop hitching to the right all day. One would hope. We'll find the key one way or t'other, if we look long and well. There's plenty of candidates to glare at! :D



Hell, Clem, fire's down, stars are up, time for your guard shift, and I'm turning in. G'night.