Well, we still don't have the final results but so many people seem to want information about my situation. So, please forgive the mass distribution, but here it is in a nutshell.
I have esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma, the bad kind) and it is in a late stage (for those of you who are aware of the current staging, it is T3, M1, N1). If you want more information about that, it is available at Wikipedia, but, again in a nutshell, the stage is generally not curable and achieves less than 3% survival for five years.
That being said, they are doing one more test next week (on the lymph nodes in my neck) to establish the protocol which will likely not be surgery or radiation, but chemotherapy.
I am going to reduce some of my non-work activity (theatre directing, etc.) so that I can zero in on getting rid of this thing. I am not interested in "checking out" just yet. While the doctors at the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore are good, they don't seem particularly interested in the non-science part of this whole phenomenon.
So I will have to take that on myself.
I will be interested in anyone who knows about alternatives that seem to be good ideas for this particular type of cancer. I already have a few friends/colleagues who have suggested acupuncture, Reiki, a Native American healer and Cancer Centers of America (they seem to be more apt to include non-traditional treatments as well as traditional). Unfortunately, the Cancer Centers of America have about the same rate as the rest of the world in dealing with this cancer.
I don't want people to think that I am not interested in "talking" on the phone. It is just that I have so many people to converse with that this seemed a bit more "efficient" although less personal. You are welcome to comment on this blog; I will be checking it.
